Mnangagwa caps 385 HIT graduates

President Mnangagwa yesterday capped 385 graduates at Harare Institute of Technology in different disciplines as the institution positions itself to become a national and global powerhouse in innovation, science and technology.

The 385 were conferred with degrees both physically and virtually in line with the need to contain Covid-19 infections.

President Mnangagwa, who is also Chancellor of State Universities capped the 385 who included undergraduate, postgraduate diploma and Master of Technology in Strategy students.

Two best graduates were conferred with the Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa Chancellor's Award and walked away with US$1 000.

In his address at the 12th graduation ceremony, HIT Vice Chancellor, Engineer Quinton Kanhukamwe said the university had made concerted efforts to contribute to the transformation of the economy through the provision of technology and engineering solutions responsive to the needs and challenges across various sectors.

He said HIT had been marked by unrelenting efforts to stay competitive and remain relevant with extraordinary dynamism and its trajectory had been defined by the need to have clear parameters offering technological and engineering solutions for economic transformation.

"Integral to this process, has been a deliberate and robust staff development programme. This entails the continuous training and retraining of the members of staff to reorient them to our mandate.

"To date, nearly 200 academic members of staff have attained Master of Technology degrees and the University has spent at least US$9 million drawn from internally generated resources to finance human capital development," said Eng Kanhukamwe.

The institution, said Eng Kanhukamwe, had managed to establish fit for purpose unique departments and programmes allowing it to deliver specialised skills needed for research and development, innovation, commercialisation and industrialisation for the economic transformation of this country.

"I am pleased to advise that HIT has been successful in commercialising its research outputs despite the various challenges that we have been facing in this ongoing process. Some of our schools have contributed to the successful establishment of spin-off companies such as Instifoods, Instichem, Instisoft, Institronics, Instipharm that have operated under the HIT Holdings Company, Institech Holdings.

"The success of the products has been varied across industries but essentially, they are slowly turning into income generating entities for the University," he said.

The university had come up with projects products and services that addressed problems in different sectors of the economy.

They included grid power optimisation system, cannabis project, production of chrome mills balls, electronic records management system, nanotechnology brick making project and a Covid-19 geotrace system among others.  Those conferred with degrees were from the schools of Engineering and Technology, Industrial Sciences and Technology, Information Science and Technology and Business and Management Sciences.

Others included postgraduate diplomas in Medical Ultrasound and Dosimetry and Master of Technology in Strategy. The event was also attended by Higher and Tertiary Education, Innovation, Science and Technology Development Minister, Professor Amon Murwira, his deputy, Raymore Machingura, Permanent Secretary, Professor Fanuel Tagwira, the Minister of State for Harare Metropolitan Province, Oliver Chidawu, Vice Chancellors of other State universities and senior Government officials.