By Advent Shoko
HARARE – Former Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) pastor and public speaker Joshua Maponga has reignited a long-running debate in Zimbabwe: are universities producing graduates fast enough for the economy, or creating thousands of qualified young people for jobs that simply do not exist?
Maponga raised the question after President Emmerson Mnangagwa capped 7,888 graduates at Midlands State University’s 27th graduation ceremony in Kwekwe.
The MSU ceremony was held under the theme “Knowledge, Innovation, Enterprise: Building a Self-Sufficient Zimbabwe” – a theme that makes Maponga’s questions particularly difficult to ignore.
In a social media post, Maponga asked whether graduates were leaving university as employees, entrepreneurs and innovators or simply becoming job seekers.
“Are these employed… unemployed… inventors and innovators or job seeking? Why are universities manufacturing unemployment?”
He went further, asking whether university education was producing solutions to Zimbabwe’s everyday problems.
“What problems are they solving? Can they help clean water, increase food production, create new platforms or reduce vehicle prices or cost of money?”
The questions have struck a nerve because Zimbabwe produces thousands of graduates every year while its formal economy remains too small to absorb everyone entering the labour market.
But the data also complicates Maponga’s argument.
The 7,888 Graduation Question
The MSU graduation provides a striking snapshot of the scale of Zimbabwe’s higher education system.
7,888 people, including veteran gospel artiste Fungisai Zvakavapano Mashavave and Colonel Miniyothabo Baloyi the wife of Vice President Constantino Chiwenga, were capped at one university ceremony.
And MSU is only one institution.
A previous analysis of Zimbabwe’s university system found that state and private universities collectively produce tens of thousands of graduates, with polytechnics, teachers’ colleges and other tertiary institutions adding thousands more.
The important question, therefore, is not simply how many Zimbabweans graduate.
It is:
How many find meaningful work, create businesses, commercialise ideas or use their qualifications to solve problems?
That is where the debate becomes more complicated.
Do Degrees Really Lead To Unemployment?
Zimbabwe’s latest detailed education-and-labour-market analysis does not support the simple conclusion that university education itself causes unemployment.
According to the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (ZIMSTAT), people with higher education actually had the highest employment-to-population ratio in the second quarter of 2025.
The employment absorption rate for people with higher education was about 70%, compared with 12% among people who had never attended school.
Their labour-force participation rate was also 76.8%, the highest of all education categories.
There is another striking number.
People with higher education recorded average earnings of about US$634.40, compared with US$232.83 for those whose highest qualification was secondary education.
That suggests higher education still carries a significant economic premium for those who manage to enter employment.
So Maponga’s argument requires an important qualification.
Universities may not be manufacturing unemployment in the literal sense. But they can produce graduates faster than Zimbabwe’s economy can create suitable opportunities for them. Another important observation is that while many are employed, according to the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) definition, many are under-employed.
That is a different problem, and arguably the more important one.
The Real Problem: Absorption
ZIMSTAT counted 3.19 million employed people in the second quarter of 2025.
Of these, about 567,683 had higher education qualifications.
That means graduates are certainly participating in the economy, but the economy remains overwhelmingly dependent on workers with secondary education or below.
The formal-sector figures tell another part of the story.
Among people employed in the formal sector, 40% had higher education, while 51.4% had secondary education.
For people with higher education, formal-sector employment absorption was 56.2%, considerably higher than for people with no schooling, at just 1.9%.
The problem is therefore not that degrees have no value.
It is that the number of graduates, the structure of the economy and the number of quality jobs being created do not always move together.
Maponga Is Not The First To Ask
Maponga is not the first Zimbabwean to question whether universities are adequately preparing graduates for the real economy.
In 2021, businessman and social media personality Acie Lumumba, whose real name is William Gerald Mutumanje, sparked a similar controversy after speaking from his experience as an employer.
“After hiring 100+ graduates across multiple positions I can authoritatively say Zimbabwe produces useless graduates.”
He immediately qualified the provocative statement, saying:
“Useless not as an attack, but as a concern, there is close to nothing you can use them for.”
Lumumba then went further, ranking graduates from different universities according to what he said was their practical performance in his businesses.
“NUST has the best crop, UZ you have to retrain, MSU mbodza dzega dzega!”
He was particularly scathing about MSU, using a mocking Shona reference to suggest that some of its graduates were not being equipped with useful workplace skills. His remarks triggered a social media backlash, with some people agreeing with his assessment while others questioned the basis for making such broad conclusions about entire universities and their graduates.
Lumumba’s comments matter to the current debate because they introduce an important perspective that graduation statistics alone cannot capture: the employer’s experience.
A university may successfully produce a graduate who has passed examinations and earned a degree.
An employer, however, asks a different question:
Can this person actually do the job?
That distinction lies at the heart of Zimbabwe’s skills-mismatch problem.
The Gap Between A Degree And A Job
Lumumba’s criticism should not be treated as statistical proof that Zimbabwean graduates are generally unemployable. His assessment was based on his own experience hiring more than 100 graduates, rather than a nationally representative study.
But the underlying issue is much bigger than one businessman.
Zimbabwe’s labour market has a persistent gap between what some graduates learn in classrooms and what employers require in the workplace.
That is why work-readiness, internships, apprenticeships, industry placements, digital skills, problem-solving and entrepreneurship have become increasingly important in the debate over higher education.
It also explains why Government introduced Education 5.0.
The model was designed to move universities beyond simply teaching and producing graduates towards innovation, industrialisation and practical problem-solving.
In theory, that means a university should not only produce a graduate who knows the theory behind water purification.
It should help produce someone capable of developing, testing, commercialising and deploying a water-purification solution.
The same principle applies to food production, transport, financial technology, energy, construction and manufacturing.
That is the standard against which Education 5.0 will ultimately be judged.
𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗱𝘂𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗰𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗼𝗻𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗰𝗮𝗽𝗮𝗰𝗶𝘁𝘆
This is what makes Maponga’s intervention particularly interesting.
His question is not simply whether graduates are employed.
- He is asking what they can produce.
- Can they increase food production?
- Can they solve Zimbabwe’s water problems?
- Can they build cheaper platforms and technologies?
- Can they reduce the cost of vehicles?
- Can they lower the cost of financial services?
- Can they create companies that employ other people?
Those questions move the debate beyond the traditional definition of university success.
For decades, the basic measure has been the number of students enrolled, examinations passed and degrees awarded.
Zimbabwe’s economic circumstances increasingly demand another scoreboard:
How many problems are being solved?
How many technologies are being commercialised?
How many businesses are being created?
How many sustainable jobs are being generated?
How many graduates are becoming employers rather than waiting indefinitely to become employees?
That is where Maponga’s argument and Lumumba’s earlier criticism unexpectedly meet.
One is questioning the social and economic purpose of mass university graduation.
The other was questioning the practical value of the graduates arriving at his businesses.
Neither argument, by itself, proves that Zimbabwe’s universities are failing.
But together they expose a question the country can no longer avoid:
Are Zimbabwe’s universities producing qualifications fast enough — or are they producing the practical capabilities needed to transform the economy?
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗺𝗶𝘀𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗰𝗵
There is, however, evidence supporting one of Maponga’s deeper concerns: education does not automatically translate into productive work.
ZIMSTAT found that qualifications and occupations do not always match.
Among elementary occupations, for example, 71.8% of workers were classified as overqualified.
In other words, people with qualifications above what their jobs require are working in positions that do not fully utilise their training.
That is a particularly important finding for a country where graduates frequently complain about spending years obtaining degrees before entering informal trading, casual work or occupations unrelated to their qualifications.
A recent academic study involving Zimbabwean university graduates reached a similar conclusion.
Researchers found a significant disconnect between university education and employment opportunities, with graduates questioning the assumption that a degree automatically guarantees employment.
The study recommended stronger partnerships between universities and industry, including involving employers when curricula and student enrolment numbers are being designed.
𝗕𝘂𝘁 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗳𝗮𝗶𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻?
This is where Zimbabwe’s Education 5.0 experiment enters the debate.
The Government introduced Education 5.0 to move higher education beyond the traditional emphasis on teaching, research and community service.
The model adds innovation and industrialisation, with universities expected to produce graduates who can create products, businesses and industries rather than simply compete for existing jobs.
The philosophy is therefore remarkably close to the challenge Maponga is making.
If universities are graduating thousands of people under a national policy explicitly built around innovation and industrialisation, the obvious question is:
Where are the factories, businesses, technologies, patents, start-ups and jobs?
𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝘀𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀
Zimbabwe’s universities are not doing nothing.
The University of Zimbabwe says its Innovation Hub has supported more than 40 innovators since it opened in 2019, with 21 graduating into university-linked start-up companies.
The university has also registered 15 strategic business units, although only three are fully operationalised.
Other institutions have developed technologies targeting real economic problems.
NUST, for example, has developed solar-powered water pumps for small-scale farmers, while Chinhoyi University of Technology has worked on biodiesel using local resources.
The Harare Institute of Technology has also been involved in technology development and industrial partnerships, including work around electricity transformers.
These examples show that the question is not whether Zimbabwean universities produce ideas.
They do.
The bigger question is whether those ideas move from exhibitions and innovation hubs into factories, markets and sustainable companies.
That is where Education 5.0 faces its hardest test.
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁-𝘂𝗽 𝗴𝗮𝗽
Zimbabwe has a growing entrepreneurial ecosystem, but it remains relatively small compared with the number of people entering the labour market.
For example, 4,675 new companies registered with NSSA in 2024, up from 4,286 in 2023.
Yet the number of new employees registered by those companies actually fell from 12,257 in 2023 to 5,737 in 2024.
The number of active NSSA contributors also fell from about 1.34 million to 1.30 million.
That is an important warning.
Zimbabwe can register more companies without necessarily creating enough jobs.
And a graduate can become an entrepreneur without necessarily creating employment for anyone else.
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗷𝗼𝗯𝘀 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗺𝗶𝘀𝗲
The employment debate also extends beyond universities.
Under the Government’s National Development Strategy 1, Zimbabwe set itself a target of creating at least 760,000 formal jobs between 2021 and 2025 — an average of about 152,000 formal jobs a year.
That target has become an important benchmark in judging the economy’s ability to absorb new entrants.
By the end of the NDS1 period, labour and economic commentators were questioning whether the Government had delivered the promised 760,000 formal jobs, with the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions calling for greater transparency around the actual figure.
The current development framework has raised the ambition even further.
Zimbabwe’s NDP IV projects 4.4 million new jobs over its five-year period, with agriculture, services and industry expected to provide much of the growth.
That tells us something important.
The unemployment problem cannot be solved by universities alone.
A university can train an engineer.
It cannot, by itself, build the factory that employs 200 engineers.
A university can train an agricultural scientist.
It cannot, by itself, provide the irrigation, finance, land, machinery and markets needed to turn that knowledge into a commercial agricultural enterprise.
𝗕𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗱𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻: 𝗮𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝘂𝘇𝘇𝗹𝗲
There is also the question of migration.
Zimbabwe has invested heavily in educating professionals who increasingly compete in a global labour market.
The International Labour Organisation has noted the rapid exodus of Zimbabwean workers and the resulting need for a comprehensive skills-development strategy. It has also highlighted the need for closer links between employers and education providers in curriculum development and review.
For a country with limited industrial capacity, this creates a difficult cycle.
Zimbabwe trains skilled people.
The domestic economy struggles to absorb them.
Other countries offer better-paying opportunities.
The skilled workers leave.
Zimbabwe then complains about a shortage of skills.
And the cycle starts again.
𝗦𝗼, 𝗶𝘀 𝗠𝗮𝗽𝗼𝗻𝗴𝗮 𝘄𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗴?
Not entirely.
But the argument needs to go beyond blaming universities.
The evidence shows that higher education improves the chances of employment, formal-sector participation and higher earnings.
At the same time, Zimbabwe has a genuine problem of skills mismatch, graduate underutilisation, limited formal job creation, weak commercialisation and an economy that is not expanding fast enough to absorb every graduate.
The challenge, therefore, is not simply:
“Why are universities producing graduates?”
It is:
“Why isn’t Zimbabwe’s economy producing enough productive opportunities for the people its education system is producing?”
That shifts responsibility from universities alone to Government, industry, financiers, universities and graduates themselves.
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗘𝗱𝘂𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝟱.𝟬 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗺𝗶𝘀𝗲
Zimbabwe has already recognised the problem.
Education 5.0 was designed precisely to move universities towards teaching, research, community service, innovation and industrialisation.
Academic research, however, has identified continuing challenges, including inadequate funding, infrastructure shortages, resistance to change, limited digital capacity and difficulties translating innovation into wider industrial impact.
The African Union has now taken a closer interest in the model, sending a high-level benchmarking mission to Zimbabwe in June 2026 to assess its implementation, impact and scalability.
That makes Maponga’s question even more relevant.
If Education 5.0 is working, Zimbabwe should eventually be able to point to more than graduation statistics.
It should be able to point to companies created, patents commercialised, technologies deployed, factories established, exports generated, farms transformed and jobs created.
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗺𝗲𝗮𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗮 𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗱𝘂𝗮𝘁𝗲
Perhaps the most uncomfortable part of Maponga’s intervention is not his claim that universities manufacture unemployment.
It is his challenge over what happens after graduation.
A degree should not become merely a certificate hanging on a wall.
But neither should every graduate be expected to invent a billion-dollar company.
Universities have a broader responsibility: to produce people capable of thinking, researching, designing, managing, teaching, creating, governing and solving problems.
The economy then has to create the conditions in which those capabilities can be used.
Zimbabwe therefore faces a double challenge.
Universities must become better at producing practical skills, innovation and commercially useful research.
The economy must become better at creating productive jobs, supporting businesses and commercialising ideas.
Until both happen at scale, the country will continue to witness the strange spectacle of thousands of proud graduation ceremonies followed by thousands of graduates joining queues for jobs.
And that is ultimately the question behind Maponga’s provocation:
If Zimbabwe can graduate 7,888 people at one university in a single ceremony, can the country build an economy capable of giving those graduates something meaningful to do?
That is a question universities cannot answer alone.
Leave a Reply