By Tatiana Mhararira
Great Zimbabwe University (GZU) was recently recognized as the best innovating university in agriculture and won the best innovator award at the Presidential Innovation Award Fair held at Harare’s Rainbow Towers recently.
GZU received the awards following its agro innovations for rural industrialization at the innovation centre for dry land agriculture in Chivi.
The university received US$10 000, a trophy and a certificate for best innovating university and also US$5 000, a trophy and a certificate for best innovator in Agriculture.
Speaking to TellZim News, GZU Director of Information and Public Relations, Anderson Chipatiso said it was an important achievement for the university to receive two awards and working towards National Development Strategy 1.
“It is a significant milestone for GZU to receive two awards at once. It demonstrates GZU’s leadership in advancing knowledge, driving change and contributing to national development,” said Chipatiso.
Chipatiso said the institution was proud of the awards and thankful for the support from the parent ministry.
“GZU has received a number of awards from the past. Last year we won runner up prizes at the Presidential Innovation Fair and this year we got the ultimate prizes in the categories which we were nominated in.
“As GZU we are very grateful for the support the institution gets from government through its parent ministry and other stakeholders,” said Chipatiso.
The Presidential Innovation Fair was running under the theme Innovation for attainment of vision 2030 and the awards aimed at celebrating learning institutions and individuals’ achievements that are found in education 5.0 which is a heritage based initiative.
The 2024 2nd Presidential Innovation Award of the Year was given to Verify Engineering Zimbabwe which won US$50 000. University of Zimbabwe was the first runner up who walked away with US$30 000 and National University of Science Technology was the second runner up who won US$20 000. The Best innovation in Environment was presented to Chinhoyi University of Technology.
