Friday, March 29, 2024

Private sector urged to support science, innovation education

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Ministry of Higher Education Permanent Secretary Kayula Siame has urged the private sector to partner with government and support the growth of the science and technology and innovation.

Ms. Siame said her ministry has undertaken a sponsorship programme for post graduate students who are interested to pursue science, technologies and innovation.

She stated that so far, her ministry has supported over 160 students but has not been able to take more due to limited funding.

Ms. Siame said supporting the students in science related programmes will contribute to developing the country in various ways, including research.

She explained that will increase the relevance of the research the students are undertaking and providing solutions to issues affecting the nation.

She said this during the Ministry of Higher Education verification exercise on public universities at University of Zambia (UNZA) yesterday.

Ms. Siame said the higher education ministry also has a role to play in restructuring and accommodating more of such students in order to develop the specialty.

The Permanent Secretary explained that the area of science, technology and innovation has for many years not been receiving much attention hence the ministry’s intervention to providing funding to students interested to pursue post graduate courses under the programme.

“If we are to achieve our vision by 2030, we can only do that if we have adequate support of the application of science, technologies, and innovations in the country,” she added.

She added that without having specialization in science and technologies, it is very difficult for a country such as Zambia to have an increase in research.

3 COMMENTS

  1. Wise words sir. Pf number one priorities have been infrastructure development and education. Our achievements speak for themselves

  2. What would have been sustainable is a program to levy an amount from businesses, especially industries to finance research. However, it’s very difficult to propose such a levy because of abuse of other levies that has caused their failure. We’re still paying fuel levy per every litre as from 1993, it was meant to finance the rehabilitation of roads but these ahev never been disbursed. We’re still paying the electricity levy that was meant to help electrify rural areas but these have been disbursed. This is what inefficiency can do, it retards development. MCS talked about these but nothing has been done. We can’t expect progress and sovereignty if we can’t research and come up with our own products. What happened to GART?

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