PRESIDENT Emmerson Mnangagwa has pledged to fund citizens keen on coming up with new inventions and innovations following the launch of Zimbabwe’s first satellite (ZimSat-1) from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, United States, last week.
ZimSat-1 was launched into space by an American rocket last week as part of the Japanese-sponsored Joint Global Multi-Nation Birds Project-5 (BIRDS-5) network.
Writing in his weekly column in the State-controlled Sunday Mail newspaper, Mnangagwa said his administration was committed to making ideas become a “scientific reality”.
“ZimSat emboldens our community of scientists; emboldens them to strive to reach higher domains of technological excellence and innovation. As your President, I make this one commitment: No Zimbabwean with ideas and keen to invent and innovate will go without funding,” Mnangagwa said.
“My administration is ready to walk you along, pick you up when you fall, motivate you to pick yourself up and do more until your idea becomes a scientific reality, and a technological product.
“Does national legend not remind us that our Varozvi — the architects of the Great Zimbabwe civilisation — made a great shot at reaching the moon, in their own unique way? Was their goal not to grab the moon and make it a holy plate for their king? They may not have accomplished that feat, but they dared to dream, thereby imparting into our national DNA the spirit of scientific inquiry and ‘venturesomeness’.
“That spirit must now take total control so that through the innovation hubs we continue to set up at various State universities and polytechnics, we conceive, invent, develop, patent and commercialise various technologies, for the industrialisation and modernisation of our nation and Africa.
“Who ever thought we could manufacture medical oxygen? Who ever thought we could develop our own personal protective equipment? Yet we now do.”
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He said government had developed many new technologies, some of which were at the commercialisation stage, and his government would in due course inform the nation.
