Funding Higher Education in Zimbabwe: Experience, Challenges and Opportunities of the Cadetship Scheme

Abstract

Sustainable growth in Africa is contingent on the capacity of states to diversify their economies and thus develop skills, education and training — the human capital that will help to carry out and support this transformation. In this process, if investment capacity is limited, higher education plays a key role in training qualified individuals who will be capable of implementing new technologies and using innovative methods to establish more efficient enterprises and institutions and thus allocate resources more effectively. Through research and increased knowledge, higher education can also help to address the challenges arising from population growth, limited arable land, endemic diseases, urbanisation, energy costs and climate change. For Zimbabwe to reap the benefits of this investment in developing human capital, higher education institutions must have financing to provide quality training and sound professional prospects to their students. Commenting on higher education funding in Sub-Saharan Africa, Hayward (2010) states:

By the late 1970s, the combination of economic decline, trade barriers, the loss of favoured-nation status, reduced external funding, higher oil prices, as well as political crises in many of these states, caused major funding problems for higher education institutions. These were to have a devastating effect on most of Africa’s universities and other higher education institutions. Most suffered from budget cuts, salary freezes, staff reductions and the curtailment of recruitment. For most of Sub-Saharan Africa this period was marked by a deterioration of facilities, the loss of research funding and other difficulties. These had a substantial negative impact on the quality of higher education at a time when the demands on these institutions were increasing.