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Robert Mukondiwa

Victoria Falls-based arts connoisseur and founder and director of Zimbabwe’s leading online sculpture gallery Avac Arts, Terrence Musiyiwa, has scored another first and put the nation on the map as he emphasises the need for both vocational skills and educational prowess.

He recently shone after Avac Arts was featured as a leading innovation and incubation project by the BBC in their Focus on Africa programme for innovative manoeuvres after the economy was hamstrung by the travel restrictions of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Essentially an online platform for featuring predominantly Shona art to the rest of the world, Masiyiwa’s dream grew rather than died when he decided to move to the area of pushing online sales and creating an online economy as many artists struggled to cope with the travel bans.

Recently, he revealed the two-pronged and two-dimensional thinking that made him intensify his work online with marketing sculptures. His own life had almost ground to a halt because of the travel restrictions.

“I was embarking on an MBA with the Catholic University in Zimbabwe (Harare campus) then all of a sudden, I was moved by work to Victoria Falls. In one move, I had to travel to Harare for lessons, but that was almost dead in the water when Covid-19 came because I could no longer make the trip. “The only choice was to drop out or defer,” he said.

Yet in the same model as his Avac Arts online platform, when the MBA went online, Musiyiwa used the same magic as his entrepreneurship and was now expected to perform on the online galaxy-a world he was remarkably familiar with. He was like a duck in water.

“While many struggled to adapt, I told people that because I had moved selling of art onto the WebSphere, the idea of functioning online was more than welcome and familiar.”

He graduated in the top 100 of the ‘Entrepreneurship for Impact’ Master’s programme.

Armed with a new wave of greater know-how and more marketable as an entrepreneur, the revenue collection guru now sees life outside of his current comfort zone and smells a move where the next call will take him.

His genius sharpened and his skills more in demand, it is only a matter of time.

All the while, he is not only growing Avac Arts but also empowering the youth.

Recently, he donated two tonnes of raw sculpting stone to women and young sculptors from all walks of life so that they may carve out their dreams and futures literally.

“It is the best thing we can do for women and girls. Merging education and culture, I have carved a genius out of myself and am well sought after in the industry after bettering myself; my dream is to afford the same to other young women and girls so that they may shine and grow out of their comfort zone as I am now ready to do,” he said.

Living testimony that passion, entrepreneurship, philanthropy and self-advancement can merge into one remarkable river of genius.