Create own jobs, GZU graduates told

GREAT Zimbabwe University (GZU) vice-chancellor Rungano Zvobgo yesterday challenged graduates to embrace entrepreneurship and create their own jobs or else risk sinking into oblivion as the country’s formal employment sector continues to shrink.

Speaking at the institution’s virtual 14th graduation ceremony at the Robert Mugabe School of Education in Masvingo, Zvobgo said the students should innovate as the COVID-19 pandemic had disrupted job opportunities the world over.

The graduation ceremony was presided over by President Emmerson Mnangagwa, where only 116 graduates — who passed with distinctions — were physically present due to COVID-19 regulations barring mass gatherings.

“As you graduate with your degrees, you are also baptised to enter into the real world armed with knowledge, wisdom and skills to make your mark. As you go out into the world, I charge you to go out there and make a difference,” Zvobgo said.

“Go out there and make Zimbabwe the home you want it to be, as a legacy for generations to come. Create the jobs that are so desperately needed, innovate, industrialise and modernise Zimbabwe,” he said.

The academic said the fresh 4 779 graduates should provide essential knowledge and inventions to find solutions to the current societal problems and technological challenges affecting the country.

“The nation is counting on you to show us how to create a new and evolved normal, with new possibilities, ground-breaking discoveries and renewed value for human life and existence. I implore the graduating class of 2020 and indeed all our alumni to make use of the knowledge learnt and translate it into solutions for real life problems that currently bedevil the country and the world,” Zvobgo said.

Zimbabwe is currently grappling with massive unemployment estimated to be at over 80%, with most people now forced into informal employment.

The situation has been exacerbated by the advent of the coronavirus which forced many countries to go into lockdown.

The country’s various institutions of higher learning annually churn out around 20 000 graduates, without a corresponding expansion of the job market as most major industries have closed while the few remaining have scaled down operations.

Mnangagwa, who laid a stone for the foundation of the GZU industrial hub and launched the institution’s textile unit, decried donor dependency syndrome, and urged maximum use of the massive water from the country’s biggest inland dam, Tugwi-Mukosi, commissioned in 2017.

“We must not look at those outside as our saviours. Innovations must come from among us,” he said.