By Margaret Kamba It is 11 days before the country celebrates 40 years of independence and an opportune time to marvel at Zimbabwe’s transformed education system that has churned out numerous graduates and innovators dotted across the world.Under the leadership of His Excellency President Emmerson Mnangagwa, the Zimbabwe education system has been transformed from merely being worker oriented to one that is producing industrialists, as the country moves towards the vision 2030 trajectory of industrialising Zimbabwe.Professor Amon Murwira, the Minister of Higher and Tertiary Education, Innovation, Science and Technology Development shares his thoughts on what to celebrate about the transformed education system:“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. “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.” Said Professor Murwira“So that summarises our transition from a non-coded education before 1898 which was very sophisticated and its products are everywhere to see in terms of our monuments, the Great Zimbabwe to an education which was disempowering. A colonial education 3.0 which is teaching, research and community service. Although it brought the advantage of codification and decoding, but coding and decoding itself is not education but schooling.“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 begs when we 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.” Added Professor Murwira“We are 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. “We are convinced that we will modernise and industrialise this country. We are convinced that the things that we lack are due to the design of the education, so that design has been changed by His Excellency President Emmerson Mnangagwa to an education that produces goods and services that is 5.0 which is heritage based and we will develop this country. We will modernise this country in our lifetime.”