by Brian Mulenga
To even begin to debate whether education is necessary for success is to show that we are in a backward, poverty stricken subsistence economy where value addition is not necessary.
If the Mexican Cartel hire MBAs and use computers in their drug trafficking business one wonders how in Zambia going to school becomes debatable.
You need skills to work in the modern information technology economy. However in a backward primitive economy the trading of basic goods and services take Centre stage.
Hence for instance in my field ICT, trading phones, tablets and computers is hustling in Zambia meanwhile in more clued up higher level economies the big money is made in niche services by highly skilled people.
Cryptography, internet of things, artificial intelligence, business intelligence and analysis, blockchain technology are the things you should be doing. Helping for instance a microfinance firm or bank manage its portfolio better by assessing clients and would be clients requires IT professionals who can design and deploy business analysis tools.
Unfortunately in Zambia we are at the subsistence level we are still trading goods and services produced somewhere else. Without any value addition the need for esoteric skills is less and the perception you don’t need education to succeed grows. I mean how much education do you need to sell a stolen laptop?
The anti education brigade have a case because we are a poor country with a low level poverty stricken economy.
In an innovation driven economy requiring a lot brainpower to provide solutions education is a necessity. We are not an information based innovation driven economy hence the need for skills is less.
Have you every wondered why we only get 2 tonnes per hectare in our maize fields and yet South African farmers get 9 tonnes? The difference is education. The South African farmers can apply all the modern farming techniques and squeeze productivity out of their acreage ours can’t even do basic mathematics to do the calculations needed to do farming scientifically. Drip irrigation for instance requires calculation of things like mixtures of fertilizers, amount of water being dispersed and so on. Let me not even start on things like interpreting weather reports (no not from the Meterological Office but from your own weather station) and satellite images of your farm and soil sample reports.
To conclude we only debate these things because we are in a subsistence economy where we trade low quality junk made elsewhere you don’t need to go to school for that.
Education is off course necessary to debate because the progress of any society lies in the productivity of its citizens. It is shameful to learn that we only get two tonnes of maize per hector when our colleagues in South Africa are able to harvest 9 tonnes. I am in agreement with the author that the difference is education. This means that we need to ensure human capital development needs through entrepreneurship education. Entrepreneur is a person that searches for change, responds to change, and exploits change by converting change into business opportunity. Zambia needs entrepreneurs in order to add value to production of goods and services. We need our youths to have entrepreneur mindsets (competencies of creativity and innovation)
as well as other structural experiences acquired through on-the-job or off-the-job which is capable of enhancing recipients opportunity of securing jobs in various sectors of the economy or even enabling the person to be self-dependent by being a job creator. This kind of education is diversified in all areas of the economy and can be found in the Ares of auto mechanics, carpentry, plumbing, computer programming, hardware maintenance, computer database technicians and web designing. It is also found in animal husbandry, animal feed production, crop production, catering, textile, radio and television maintenance, motor-cycle repairs, food processing among others.
This is what will ensure value addition in order to move forward from the so called poverty stricken subsistence economy. To have an information based innovation driven economy we need the kind of Education that inculcates in our youths the knowledge, skills and attitudes required in the world of work. This kind of education is a promising means to create flexible and self-responsible learning attitudes, which might hence better prepare youths for the requirements of the modern work place. Poor skills and low productivity of firms is often seen as the reason for low levels of economic development in Zambia. Therefore promoting entrepreneur education in Zambia is an important pillar of the transformation into a knowledge-based economy. Double H7 can also do well to engage Zambian professionals in the diaspora on this subject so that there can be transfer of knowledge and skills from developed countries to Zambia.
In conclusion we need to move forward and away from our subsistence economy of trading in low quality junk by promoting a prosperous Zambia with vibrant Business enterprising economic ventures in which our youths can be engaged as jeans of livelihood. Zambia is on the right trajectory because we finally have a President in Double H7 who understands how we can transform our economy and uplift the living standards of the Zambian people through business enterprises. A business enterprise according to me is an entity in which the self-employed family firms, partnerships and association regularly engage in an economic activity. These are the deliberations we need to preoccupy our minds as Zambians today. We should not allow ourselves to be derailed by the dununa reverse mentality of promoting insults for the Presidency through Zambian figurative expressions.