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Stephen Mpofu, Perspective

What the above heading implies is that tertiary institutions like the National University of Science and Technology (Nust) and others similar to it should now or eventually stop admitting we-were-also-there’s whose living room walls flaunt framed degrees or ordinary certificates but both of which boast no practical evidence of improving the lives of the majority of our people out there in the larger Zimbabwean house or nation.

That is precisely the message from Zimbabwean ambassador at-large to the Americas and Europe, Prophet Eubert Angel, to young people in this country in a lecture he delivered at the Nust in Bulawayo last Tuesday.

Prophet Angel said “I was encouraged by the President to come here today and spread the spirit of entrepreneurship. What I always want to encourage young people is that you can start any entrepreneurship initiative before you even graduate. Being at a tertiary institution gives you an advantage to start using your skills and become a millionaire today.”

Ignoring the ambassador’s prudent advice will no doubt prove disastrous for young people who go to Nust or to other tertiary institutions in hopes of getting ideas for a better future when they should instead get improvement from the tertiary institutions to better their entrepreneurship skills to blossom and in the process become catalysts under the country’s Vision 2030 to turn our nation into an upper middle-income society.

What the above message also suggests is that schools should, under the auspices of relevant Government institutions, go the whole hog in transforming the mindsets of young people from yearnings for sedentary office jobs and in that way contribute to our country’s industrialisation and its ultimate goal of national development.

Universities or other institutions should also have workshops lined up to update the knowledge of young entrepreneurs as mere verbal exhortations through radio or/and newspapers for businesses to play a bigger role in national development are not likely to seriously impact the minds of listeners.

This communicologist can site examples of journalists who have attended short courses in their profession offered by Nust and have returned to their jobs to do much, much better in their journalese or/and administrative acumen.

Which goes to prove the veracity of what Prophet Angel said at Nust.

Today the rest of the world, including our own country, has been teetering under the onslaught of the Covid-19 pandemic which shows no signs of completely pittering out, just as global warming shows no end signs.

But while the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) principles of sanitising, social distancing, washing hands and masking up have helped in the survival of many during the Covid-19 pandemic, people out there in the countryside where the majority of Zimbabweans live are not known to have benefited from seminars or workshops on how to survive the effects of global warming.

Rather than issuing verbal directives to people out there through radio and newspapers to not wantonly destroy forests since trees absorb and sink carbon gases thereby preventing them from eroding the ozone layer that protects Earth from the sun’s dangerous rays, and on constructing fireguards against veld fires, seminars for villagers and their traditional leaders should be held out there and in languages with which the rural folk are most conversant to spread information and in that way minimise if not altogether prevent the dangerous effects of global warming on people.

Consideration to breed that hardy animal, the donkey, for draught power, for instance, should be made in regions, or parts of regions where pastures are prone to incineration by vicious global warming heat waves.

Expert advice may also be given on areas suitable for cropping drought-tolerant small grains or maize or both those crops in the wake of the droughts spawned by global warming.

At the moment explorations of oil and gas are taking place in some parts of Zimbabwe, a development that is most welcome.

However, should not Zimbabweans be actively engaged in the explorations by foreign countries so that our people may own the projects security-wise and in that way guarantee the safety of the projects ad infitum?

Similarly, our Government authorities might wish to hold seminars with villagers on how to protect their livestock and crops from the effects of climate change as such initiatives will no doubt bear fruit.

Action and not mere talk has the power to arm people against negative effects on their future.

Finally, if people follow exhortations by the saying “a stitch in time saves nine” a lot will be done to save humanity from negative weather or other perilous effects.