Drive national development, scholarship recipients urged
PRESIDENT MNANGAGWA yesterday challenged 10 students that have benefited from the ED-UNZA Scholarship Fund to pursue their studies at various universities not to abuse the facility, but utilise it for the development of the country.
The Fund is the brainchild of the President and was established in 2019 to assist gifted but disadvantaged students to study at his former university, the University of Zambia but has now expanded to include those enrolled at local universities.
The President shared his personal history, highlighting his own journey from a disadvantaged background and encouraged the students to remain focused and determined in their pursuit of education, particularly in fields that contribute to the country’s modernization and industrialization
Addressing the students that were drawn from across the country’s provinces, President Mnangagwa said:
“The ED-UNZA Scholarship Fund is designed to help boys and girls coming from disadvantaged families, just because we don’t have enough funds, our Fund is still very small, otherwise we should have many more students under this Scholarship Fund.
“I believe that my team has picked you realising that you have potential but unfortunately you don’t have requisite requirements for you to pursue your education, so this is the chance you have been given by the ED-UNZA Scholarship programme and I hope you will not mess it up but you will do what you said you want to do, I hope that you will do so,” he said.
The President narrated his history saying he had also come from a similar background and did the bulk of his education in prison.
“I wish to inform you that to some extent I came from such (a disadvantaged background). I only passed grade seven in school, the rest, where I am now, I have struggled through correspondence but in prison. I am not asking you to take that journey because the majority of you will run away.
“I don’t think you would want to spend 10 years in prison but with consistency and persistence for my education I obtained my first law degree, so it is possible, if you are focused and you have determination to achieve a particular goal,” he said.
He said in the past only those who had studied law, medicine and theology were considered learned but said the belief had changed with time with people now focusing more on science and technology.
“But now I understand that people doing engineering, doing sciences are considered educated, I have no quarrel with that because I believe that every country that has developed, has developed from science. It is science that makes products and services. Yet in the past education was not designed to make us, black people be productive and produce products. It was designed for us to serve colonial powers but now for us, particularly the Second Republic, we are now focused on science.”
Continued on www.herald.co.zw