Future of Zambia’s democracy lies in voting - Storella
By Darious Kapembwa in Kitwe
Wed 01 Dec. 2010, 04:01 CAT
THE US envoy to Zambia says the people who have registered as voters hold the key to the country’s democracy. Ambassador Mark Storella urged the young people to register as voters in numbers to enable them to participate in next year’s elections.
Ambassador Storella made the remarks when he toured the Copperbelt University (CBU) on Monday. He challenged the students to take part in public life.
“I have learnt that 900,000 have registered as voters countrywide and 188,000 have registered from the Copperbelt so far, which is the highest according to the Electoral Commission of Zambia. What you young people need is to prepare yourselves to take up the leadership mantle in the country,” Ambassador Storella said.
The voters registration exercise officially closed yesterday but the elections body says it might re-open the exercise in March next year if funds are available.
Ambassador Storella said US President Barrack Obama believed that African youths had the potential to transform their continent through education.
He urged the students to take advantage of education to explore ways of enhancing Zambia’s economic transformation.
However, Ambassador Storella said infrastructure remained a challenge to scholars in Zambia.
He said Zambia had lagged behind in terms of development because of the landlocked syndrome.
Ambassador Storella said lack of infrastructure in institutions of learning like CBU where six students occupied a single room was not healthy.
However, he hailed CBU management for continuing to partner with cooperating partners to improve standards at the institution.
He said there were many opportunities for partnerships in education in the United States.
“What we have learnt is that we cannot do what Zambians want to do for themselves, but we can help,” Ambassador Storella said.
And CBU vice-chancellor Professor Mutale Musonda requested the US government to help CBU partner with US institutions to develop capacity in mining and instrumentation engineering courses.
Prof Musonda said the university needed more infrastructure development projects and technical support in order to respond to industry requirements for graduating students.
Prof Musonda disclosed that KLE University of India and CBU had signed a memorandum of understanding to introduce a medical school for CBU as a joint venture.
He said the new medical faculty would run two programmes: general medicine and dentistry to be conducted at Ndola Central Hospital starting in April 2011.
Prof Musonda said the Indian university had also written a proposal to the government requesting to run Ndola hospital as a teaching hospital on concessional basis.
He said CBU had repositioned its research structure to suit developing trends in the education sector and industrial demands.
“We only have a school offering diploma in dentistry in Lusaka now we think this memorandum of understanding with KLE offers an opportunity for the country to train dentists up to degree level,” he said.
Prof Musonda said there was very little being done by the private sector to equip libraries or computer laboratories with the necessary materials to enhance students’ learning needs.
Labels: CBU, MARK STORELLA, MUTALE MUSONDA, VOTER REGISTRATION
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Prof Musonda urges change of mindset for Zambia is progress
Written by Zumani Katasefa in Kitwe
Sunday, June 28, 2009 4:36:27 PM
COPPERBELT University (CBU) Vice-Chancellor Professor Mutale Musonda has urged Zambians to change their mindsets if the country is to progress.
Speaking on Friday night at his residence when CBU management welcomed new members of staff, Prof Musonda said the greatest challenge the country was facing was innovation and creativity.
"The challenge that Zambia is facing is not to speak English but innovation. Innovation and creativity that is what a child needs at the university," he said.
He said institutions of high learning such as universities should be focusing on producing job producers and not job seekers.
"We need to increase access at any level by way of increasing infrastructure. We need to expand infrastructure in education and increase human resources," said Prof. Musonda.
"Changing the mindset in Zambia is the challenge we are facing; not degrees, this country has everything," he said.
He observed that most Zambians were only interested in the fruits but not in the process.
Prof. Musonda also said that if Zambia was to achieve development in various sectors, there was need to learn to share knowledge.
And Prof Musonda said newly appointed education minister Dora Siliya couldn't provide leadership just as an individual.
"She cannot provide leadership just as an individual, but if we work as a team she would do," he said.
He called for teamwork at all levels of leadership in the country if Zambia was to move forward.
Prof Musonda also said that Zambians should not lose hope as the country was passing through the economic recession.
"Zambians should be determined to succeed. They should learn to sacrifice, selfishness will not help this country move forward. Dreams should be fulfilled through determination and hard work," he said.
Prof Musonda also said that CBU management was seriously looking into the problem of accommodation at the institution.
He said it was not deliberate that students were sleeping in the television room at the campus, saying that the university had just converted the rooms for temporary accommodation.
A couple of months ago, several university students were spending nights in the television room due to inadequate accommodation.
Labels: MUTALE MUSONDA
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Let's think and think and think
By Editor
Sunday August 03, 2008 [04:00]
A society which values its future affords the highest priority to providing quality education for all its young people. Education should not only become a real budgetary priority; it should also become a priority in the minds, words and actions of our leaders. And our leaders should invest substantial political influence and technical ability to revamp our education system and upgrade performance levels. We say this because education is increasingly seen as the most important catalyst for development. The low level of educational achievement of most of our workforce, if not corrected, will seriously undermine our country’s development potential. Education is one of the most effective ways to empower the poor.
There is urgent need to reform our education system. But reform will not happen without effective political leadership and widespread social involvement.
It is true – and Copperbelt University Vice-Chancellor Professor Mutale Musonda’s observation is correct – that university education in Zambia has not grown to the desired levels due to lack of adequate investment.
The education of our youth is a critical challenge facing our nation today. We must undertake education of the youth seriously and treat it as a top priority if we are to produce the kind of men and women so desperately needed by our age – men and women not only of high culture but of great personality.
And as we had stated in yesterday’s editorial comment, ignorance is the root of many ills. Knowledge must be the fundamental ally of nations that aspire, despite all their tragedies and problems, to become truly emancipated, to build a better world.
We need many clear ideas and many questions about how the future of our country can be, or will be.
Of course, every period and every nation will need increasingly well-prepared, increasingly able leaders. It’s a new world that is emerging now. We have to adapt to this world, we should continue to adapt, and we should be learning what to do. And quality education will be very important in all this. We need to develop sentiments of solidarity, political awareness, and values that have immense power.
We have to develop our human capital and learn to survive by it. With human capital, we can help many people, with our experience we can do that, and with that experience we can help ourselves.
And we say this with confidence because this country made very serious advances in education within a few years of independence and was able to share this, educate many citizens of Botswana – a country that was very poor in the 1960s and 1970s and did not have enough schools, colleges or a university, many Zimbabweans, Namibians, South Africans, Malawians and many others from troubled African countries of the time – without charging a ngwee.
Let’s think and think and think about our education and about everything; let’s think about alternatives. The habit of looking for alternatives and choosing from among the best of them is a very good habit.
Now, we have to develop and educate a complex society and see what comes of it. We have to discover talents. Who knows how much genius, how much talent there is among our people? We harbour the theory that talent is everywhere, if not in one thing then in another – for computers or for music or for engineering or mechanics. Genius is common and some have it in one thing and some have it in another.
We need to develop a new generation that is going to have three or four times the knowledge that those in the generation that fought for our independence had, and more or less, over three times the knowledge of our second generation of leaders. And the new generation should know at least two and half times what the current generation does.
If we achieve this, more people will come here to see the social development of this country, the social achievements in this country than our Victoria Falls, our wildlife in the national parks of Mfuwe, South Luangwa, Lower Zambezi, Kafue and so on and so forth.
We have no sensible alternative but to create human capital, and human capital is not created with egoism, or by stimulating individualism in society.
We should aim, as a nation, to achieve levels of knowledge and culture, on average, that will be, if we look at it as a marathon, several laps ahead of many countries in our region on our continent behind us, and we say this without chauvinism. We detest chauvinism – we like criticism, and constant criticism. Every time we talk about what we have done, we should express shame and embarrassment for not having done more; every time we use things or formulas we have discovered, we should express shame and embarrassment for not having discovered them earlier; every time we take advantage of new possibilities, we should confess our sadness at not having been able to have those experien knowledgeable, a society moving ahead at an increasingly swift rate, swifter than ever, towards the multiplication of its knowledge in every field: philosophy, politics, history, science, the arts and so on and so forth. Everything should be moving forward, because we should now be able to acquire an awareness of the possibilities of modern technological methods for multiplying knowledge.
All this cannot be done, cannot be achieved except on the basis of principles, on the basis of ideas, on the basis of the ethics. It’s the only way. We should believe in the human being, in his or her ability to acquire an ethic, a conscience.
Looked at it in this way, it becomes easier to appreciate why Prof Musonda is saying that the problem of funding is not so much a question of limited availability of funds but conviction in the value of investing in education. There is need for our public universities to be properly funded so that they can continue offering quality education needed to produce competent human capital needed in the development of our country.
Labels: CBU, EDUCATION, MUTALE MUSONDA
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Prof Musonda bemoans levels of investment in university education
By Zumani Katasefa in Kitwe
Sunday August 03, 2008 [12:47]
COPPERBELT University vice-chancellor Professor Mutale Musonda has observed that university education in Zambia has not grown to the desired levels due to lack of adequate investment. Speaking during the 17th graduation ceremony held on Friday, Prof Musonda noted that the private sector was not adequately investing in promotion of university education.
He noted that the concept of functional education as a catalyst for national development was widely accepted in the developing world, and universities were strategically placed in the realisation of this human endeavour.
He said there were tremendous opportunities for research and consultancy in Zambia, especially on the Copperbelt.
Prof Musonda added that there was also need to avoid spreading resources for research "too thinly and away from national universities" which were centres in the national systems for research and education.
"There should also be an attempt to build longer-term research structures that will be key to national cultural centres. Further, the move to support universities as centres of research assists in the development of postgraduate and doctoral programmes, which provide cutting-edge research for national development," he said.
Prof Musonda reiterated the need for public universities to be properly funded so that they can continue offering quality university education needed to produce competent human resource needed in the national development.
"Funding for research and development by both government and the private sector has, however, been limited and has contributed to the poor performance in the application of science and technology in national development. It seems the problem of funding is not so much a question of limited availability of funds but conviction in the value of investing in education," he said.
He added that policy makers and African entrepreneurs in general had not fully appreciated the return on investing in university education.
Speaking at the same occasion, CBU chancellor Prof Muyunda Mwanalushi bemoaned a low level of women participation in politics in Zambia.
"Despite the parity in the population of males and females, the latter still lag behind in national development. Inadequate or lack of education contributes to the low participation of females in national development.
Females have a higher dropout rate at all levels of the school system. In this regard universities are challenged to undertake research and to design programmes aimed at reversing the dropout rate of girls and to uplift the welfare of women," he said.
Five Hundred and eighty-eight students graduated yesterday.
Labels: CBU, EDUCATION, MUTALE MUSONDA
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