Students blame Zimbabwe education system for joblessness

ZIMBABWE's tertiary students have blamed the country's education system for not preparing them for formal job after completing their studies, resulting in many turning to vending to make ends meet.

Youth organisation, the National Association of Youth Organisations (Nayo) recently disclosed that 90% of youths in the country are unemployed, with universities and colleges churning out graduates who are failing to secure jobs.

Yesterday, Zimbabwe Congress of Students Union president Pijiwest Nhamburo told NewsDay that the problem is that the country's education policies were mostly inherited from the colonial era.

"The problem we are facing together as a government or as a people is a product of history. The situation our country has been facing since the attainment of independence in 1980 is that we inherited a higher and tertiary education system which was designed to nurture, mould and create a workforce that will work in the services industry. It was not designed to produce graduates from universities and polytechnics whose minds are programmed to come up with solutions to existing problems in society," Nhamburo said.

"Year-in, year-out we see our institutions parcelling out graduates, who in most cases are not going to be employed. They become hustlers on the streets.  The coming in of the Education 5.0 policy has brought in drastic changes where we have seen the coming in of innovation hubs which are a critical component for graduates. The innovation hubs are meant to nurture the skills required by society to solve social problems."

Zimbabwe National Students Union president Joseph Nyamayaro said: "We have seen over the years the capping of graduates into an empty economy that is not ready to give them jobs. As a result we have witnessed a lot of problems whereby graduates are moving to other countries for greener pastures. We have witnessed scenarios of thuggery and thieving created by financial difficulty and poverty. We have also seen a lot of debt, homelessness, family tensions, alienations and stigmatisation centred on being a graduate without a job.

Efforts to get a comment from the Higher and Tertiary Education minister, Amon Murwira were fruitless as his mobile phone rang unanswered.

In 2018, President Emmerson Mnangagwa told over 3 000 Great Zimbabwe University graduates that they should create their own jobs or risk sinking into oblivion as formal employment opportunities continue to shrink.

This has sadly resulted in loss of critical skills as a majority of graduates leave the country in search of greener pastures.