The Sunday Mail
Sunday Mail Reporter
Universities can help speed up the country’s industrialisation by coming up with home-grown solutions to tackle challenges such as the Covid-19 pandemic, the Minister of Higher and Tertiary Education, Innovation, Science and Technology Development, Professor Amon Murwira, has said.
Professor Murwira said this after touring the University of Zimbabwe (UZ)’s Innovation Hub, which is currently manufacturing personal protective equipment (PPEs) to help fight the coronavirus.
He was joined by Dr John Mangwiro who is the Deputy Minister of Health and Child Care, UZ Vice-Chancellor Professor Paul Mapfumo and some senior Government officials.
“I have seen the vibrancy that can be brought to this economy through innovation for purposes of industrialisation,” said Professor Murwira.
“Today we have been looking at innovations that are taking place at the innovation hub of the University of Zimbabwe to support the health services sector.
“We have been able to see how they can make pharmaceutical grade salt for purposes of making intravenous fluids. We have also seen how they have been able to use natural materials in Zimbabwe to make latex gloves, because in the meantime all these things are being imported.”
The hub is presently producing N95 masks, face shields, hand sanitisers and temperature checking devices, among other PPEs.
It has so far supplied more than 30 000 theatre gowns to the National Pharmaceutical Company (NatPharm).
Professor Murwira said the development of such key products and their eventual adoption for large-scale production can spur the country’s industrialisation.
“We have been able to see how a range of PPE is being made,” he said.
“For a country to industrialise, it has to be able to apply its knowledge on its natural heritage to produce things that are needed by itself and as well as for export.
“What we are seeing here is the birth of Zimbabwe’s industrialisation process, whereby the people of Zimbabwe are gaining confidence through higher education, because higher education normally is the driver of innovations.”
Dr Mangwiro said the nation should re-consider its course and find ways to survive the pandemic.
“I think this is quite an eye-opener and I have seen that things can be done,” he said.
“The Covid-19 has changed our way of thinking because I have seen that nearly everything that we were importing can be locally produced, saving us a lot of very scarce foreign currency, and this goes hand-in-hand with what His Excellency (President Emmerson Mnangagwa) is trying to encourage, to say ‘let’s do our things locally so that we do not depend on imports’.”
Dr Mangwiro said local universities are now concentrating more on production and innovation, something which was rare in the past.
“All the PPEs that we were procuring from different countries can now be locally done, much cheaper and even the quality is excellent,” he said.
“And in terms of the mask, they have produced the equivalent of the N95, and that is very encouraging, they can produce face shields, gowns.
“So we are almost there in terms of PPEs . . . We need this to be taken by our local industries so that they can run with it. Our aim is that we should be able to start exporting very soon so that they can bring us the much-needed foreign currency.”
Professor Mapfumo said the institution will continue to incubate innovative ideas which can transform industry. He called for more support from business.
