ZANU PF President and First Secretary Cde E.D Mnangagwa has applauded efforts Many institutions among them Midlands State University, University of Zimbabwe, Harare Institute of Technology and Chinhoyi University of Technology among others have been producing PPEs to assist in combating the covid19 pandemic. Speaking during the 345th session of the Politburo in Harare today, President Mnangagwa said the heritage based education 5.0 is delivering tangible results. Just this week, President Mnangagwa urged Saint Gobain Construction Products Zimbabwe to partner with institutions of higher learning in order to promote innovative ideas. “Our heritage bases Education 5.0 model is delivering tangible results towards our quest to industrialise and modernize our economy. As Chancellor of all State Universities, I annually officiate at their graduation ceremonies. Their determination to establish innovation and industrial parks as building blocks for our national development is commendable,” said President Mnangagwa. Professor Amon Murwira, the Minister of Higher and Tertiary Education, Innovation, Science and Technology Development is on record saying that education 5.0 has moved the country to a period of modernization and industrialization. “We are past the period of self-preservation to a period of national modernisation and industrialisation, to a period of preserving the independence of this country. It can be preserved when people are modernised, when they are industrialised, when they are not begging,” said Professor Murwira. “The best way to preserve the independence of a country is through using its education to produce medicines, to produce food, to produce services, to produce a non-begging population and to produce a contributing and productive population.” Professor Murwira adds that “education itself is an education that produces goods and services, which is education 5.0. Post-independence, an education which makes a people confident, an education which makes a people a contributing people not a dependent people but we can be inter-dependant. We cannot be a people that beg when they have got a wealth of mineral resources, a wealth of fauna, thus our wildlife, a wealth of flora with plant diversity of more than 4 000 species in this country and more than 4000 minerals in this country and with enough water resources when they are dammed.” He adds that the country is “at a time when we are using our education for the transformation of these (and) for the improvement of people’s lives. Our curricula in our tertiary institutions, polytechnics, national training institutions and universities must talk to this. It is not a luxury. It’s a must. It’s time for transformation and not time for self-preservation. It’s time for an education that matters not an education that labels but an education that levels, an education that gives us the levels which are enough to modernise and industrialise this country.”