Funding crisis chokes local research

SAMANTHA MADE

The Harare Institute of Technology (HIT) has appealed  for stronger government and industry support, saying chronic underfunding is suffocating high-impact research and slowing the emergence of locally built technologies.

Speaking at the 3rd Annual Financial Inclusion Conference in the capital Harare last week,  Tererai Maposa said several key projects have stalled or been delayed due to prohibitive costs that academic institutions cannot shoulder alone.

“The first one is lack of funding. Some of the research that we wanted to do was costly. At some point, we wanted to do research that required Internet of Things sensors, and they were very expensive. We had to buy them from Spain,” he said.

He noted that some successful projects only materialised because external partners stepped in. “As a group, we ended up being funded by an NGO called the Commonwealth Local Government Forum (CLGF), which is why the project was successful.”

Maposa criticised the prevailing industrial culture, saying it places unrealistic expectations on local researchers while offering little investment or tolerance for trial and error.

“The industry doesn’t allow researchers to fail. We are compared to SAP, which is sitting on billions of dollars, even from Germany. And here we are, we are building something that speaks to Zimbabwe. One was not built overnight.”

He emphasised that global technologies Zimbabwean industries benchmark against have gone through years—if not decades—of refinement. “The industry is not forgiving; they want a finished product, and here we are trying to build something new, disruptive. And of course, a new thing requires time to mature.”

Maposa singled out the Minerals Marketing Corporation of Zimbabwe (MMCZ) as a rare example of an institution willing to invest the time and resources required to nurture a local innovation into a functional product.

“If you have contacts for MMCZ people, I encourage you to go there. What failed to be automated in other systems… we managed to do that because they gave us time, patience, and they also funded us very well,” he said.

He urged both government and private sector players to back local innovation deliberately and consistently. HIT has even taken symbolic steps to inspire confidence in homegrown products.

“We have made it deliberate in naming our products using vernacular. We have Ndarama, we have Musiyama, and a prepaid automated management system. We have another one called iSikolo for school management; we are working with the Minister of Primary Education.”

“We are naming our products using vernacular… because we want people to believe in local products.”

Maposa said Zimbabwean talent is internationally recognised, and the success of HIT graduates abroad shows that the nation can build globally competitive systems. “We have produced students who are working for Facebook, who are working for Google. So, as Zimbabweans, we are able to do it.”

He appealed to local industries to be patient with emerging innovators. “Let’s encourage the industry to take those local. Even if they fail, give us a chance to perfect it. Rather than killing the innovations while they are in the infant stage, be patient,” he said.

Policy inconsistencies, Maposa added, are compounding the problem. He pointed to HIT’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system for local authorities—an internationally certified solution that many councils still refuse to fully adopt.

“We have developed an ERP for local authorities. It’s good; it has been certified by an international organization. You can’t bribe anyone to certify our ERP. It’s good. But the uptake… they are cherry-picking modules as they want. And they are leaving some of the core. Digitalization in that space is not mandatory. It becomes a challenge.”