Role of MUST in Malawi’s progress
It was late president Bingu wa Mutharika’s dream that the Malawi University of Science and Technology (Must) university plant a spirit of researching into and developing indigenous resources for a science and technology that remains industry-oriented.
Apart from scientific and industrial engineering, Bingu envisioned that the university also include a special faculty in African Tradition Medicine and African Arts to enhance indigenous resources and inspire the people’s pride in what we locally have.
Calestous Juma, a Kenyan scientist, the champion of innovation and sustainable development in Africa and a professor at Havard Kennedy School, argues in the July edition of New African 2015 Magazine that Africa is saddled with higher education systems that were created in the early 1960s to train functionaries to work in the colonial government offices such as administrators, teachers, secretaries, economists and more, not innovators.
In addition, Professor Mammo Muchie, a well-known Pan-Africanism Nigerian scholar, argues that universities in Africa should be made in the image of Africa.
Must followed this thinking and was established in the image of Malawians to reflect their daily challenges.
Bingu set up the right African model by setting up a university specifically for science and technology.
According to Dr Bright Molande, an ardent scholar on African literature and history, “the uniqueness of the new university lies in its philosophy that science and technology is most relevant and meaningful to people when it involves the people’s wisdom and evolves with their culture.”
Now, it is understood that Must has established ‘The Bingu School of African Culture and Heritage’ and this brings hope that Bingu’s dream to champion the African progress in science and technological innovation using local resources will finally see the light.
A few years ago, it was easily tempting to start wondering and asking why the African is the only person on earth who apparently cannot invent or manufacture anything from a scratch.
Yet, Africans can create something. Our own William Kamkwamba and Mixon Faluweki have shown this.
Kamkwamba, a boy from Wembe Village in Kasungu be wildered the world his innovation of a windmill which he put together using simple locally available materials.
Faluweki, a bachelor of Education Science student at Chancellor College of the University of Malawi, has rocked the world with his invention of a bicycle mobile phone charger, which he has called the Padoko charger. These innovations are, apparently, the essence of Must.
The word innovation is broadly defined as the purposeful implementation of new technical, economical, organisational and social problem solutions that are oriented to achieve objectives in a new way.
In these days, innovation has become a buzz word for development planners. Everyone now is saying: We must innovate, we must innovate.
It is said that Africa needs innovations more than the rest of the continents due to the myriad of poverty challenges it faces.
The World Bank in a 2011 report on innovations stressed that innovation is a major source of improved productivity, competitiveness, and economic growth throughout advanced and emerging economies, and plays an important role in creating jobs, generating income, alleviating poverty, and driving social development.
But birthing and promoting a culture of technological innovations has been a challenge for the African continent.
As at the beginning of the 21st century, only four African countries of Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt and South Africa displayed strongly diversified economies that host functioning and reasonably well-articulated innovation systems.
Kenya and Ghana are also reported to be on the right course towards vibrant technological innovations.
Elsewhere, like in Malawi, the innovation systems are called to be emergent or disarticulated.
Innovation hubs are important because they act as anchoring points of innovators. Young innovators get support from such hubs.
While some Malawi universities are playing much bigger roles in attempting technological innovations, Must ought to lead the technological innovations.
For this was Bingu’s grand dream: To innovate and become a nation of entrepreneurs that dominantly exports and not dominantly imports.
The world has now adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a 17-point development plan which replaces the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Goal 9 of the SDGs incorporates innovation as one of the means to achieving development aims. The goal aims to “Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation”.
Malawi should be part of this large movement in technological innovation culture for development.
Must might wish to consider to first engage itself in a debate and research focusing on what activities and conditions precisely drives innovation and more importantly, the internal processes that affect the people’s ability to innovate in Malawi.
Experts in innovations have argued that while innovation come from individual talents, the main driving factors of innovation are caused by socio-cultural or political-economic conditions that affect the people’s rationality capacity to innovate.
Currently, apart from setting up the National Commission of Science and Technology in 2003, Malawi has no national systems of innovation (NSI) policy which can help defining the course for the promotion of technological innovations in the country.
Emmanuel Fabiano, Minister of Education, Science and Technology, during Must’s Open Day, commended the university for its innovation dreams.
There are many socio-economic challenges currently facing Malawi and whose solution lies in innovation.
The work of Must is well cut out.
It was late president Bingu wa Mutharika’s dream that the Malawi University of Science and Technology (Must) university plant a spirit of researching into and developing indigenous resources for a science and technology that remains industry-oriented.
Apart from scientific and industrial engineering, Bingu envisioned that the university also include a special faculty in African Tradition Medicine and African Arts to enhance indigenous resources and inspire the people’s pride in what we locally have.
Calestous Juma, a Kenyan scientist, the champion of innovation and sustainable development in Africa and a professor at Havard Kennedy School, argues in the July edition of New African 2015 Magazine that Africa is saddled with higher education systems that were created in the early 1960s to train functionaries to work in the colonial government offices such as administrators, teachers, secretaries, economists and more, not innovators.
In addition, Professor Mammo Muchie, a well-known Pan-Africanism Nigerian scholar, argues that universities in Africa should be made in the image of Africa.
Must followed this thinking and was established in the image of Malawians to reflect their daily challenges.
Bingu set up the right African model by setting up a university specifically for science and technology.
According to Dr Bright Molande, an ardent scholar on African literature and history, “the uniqueness of the new university lies in its philosophy that science and technology is most relevant and meaningful to people when it involves the people’s wisdom and evolves with their culture.”
Now, it is understood that Must has established ‘The Bingu School of African Culture and Heritage’ and this brings hope that Bingu’s dream to champion the African progress in science and technological innovation using local resources will finally see the light.
A few years ago, it was easily tempting to start wondering and asking why the African is the only person on earth who apparently cannot invent or manufacture anything from a scratch.
Yet, Africans can create something. Our own William Kamkwamba and Mixon Faluweki have shown this.
Kamkwamba, a boy from Wembe Village in Kasungu be wildered the world his innovation of a windmill which he put together using simple locally available materials.
Faluweki, a bachelor of Education Science student at Chancellor College of the University of Malawi, has rocked the world with his invention of a bicycle mobile phone charger, which he has called the Padoko charger. These innovations are, apparently, the essence of Must.
The word innovation is broadly defined as the purposeful implementation of new technical, economical, organisational and social problem solutions that are oriented to achieve objectives in a new way.
In these days, innovation has become a buzz word for development planners. Everyone now is saying: We must innovate, we must innovate.
It is said that Africa needs innovations more than the rest of the continents due to the myriad of poverty challenges it faces.
The World Bank in a 2011 report on innovations stressed that innovation is a major source of improved productivity, competitiveness, and economic growth throughout advanced and emerging economies, and plays an important role in creating jobs, generating income, alleviating poverty, and driving social development.
But birthing and promoting a culture of technological innovations has been a challenge for the African continent.
As at the beginning of the 21st century, only four African countries of Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt and South Africa displayed strongly diversified economies that host functioning and reasonably well-articulated innovation systems.
Kenya and Ghana are also reported to be on the right course towards vibrant technological innovations.
Elsewhere, like in Malawi, the innovation systems are called to be emergent or disarticulated.
Innovation hubs are important because they act as anchoring points of innovators. Young innovators get support from such hubs.
While some Malawi universities are playing much bigger roles in attempting technological innovations, Must ought to lead the technological innovations.
For this was Bingu’s grand dream: To innovate and become a nation of entrepreneurs that dominantly exports and not dominantly imports.
The world has now adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a 17-point development plan which replaces the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Goal 9 of the SDGs incorporates innovation as one of the means to achieving development aims. The goal aims to “Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation”.
Malawi should be part of this large movement in technological innovation culture for development.
Must might wish to consider to first engage itself in a debate and research focusing on what activities and conditions precisely drives innovation and more importantly, the internal processes that affect the people’s ability to innovate in Malawi.
Experts in innovations have argued that while innovation come from individual talents, the main driving factors of innovation are caused by socio-cultural or political-economic conditions that affect the people’s rationality capacity to innovate.
Currently, apart from setting up the National Commission of Science and Technology in 2003, Malawi has no national systems of innovation (NSI) policy which can help defining the course for the promotion of technological innovations in the country.
Emmanuel Fabiano, Minister of Education, Science and Technology, during Must’s Open Day, commended the university for its innovation dreams.
There are many socio-economic challenges currently facing Malawi and whose solution lies in innovation.
The work of Must is well cut out.
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