When the Harare Institute of Technology (HIT) was granted degree awarding status in 2005 with the promulgation of the Harare Institute of Technology Act {Chapter 25:26}, it promised a different kind of graduate, not job-seekers, but job-creators. On Friday, 19 June 2026, that promise took tangible form on the HIT campus, as postgraduate students from the Master of Technology in Strategy and Innovation programme unveiled three fully registered companies, born entirely out of their coursework in New Venture Creation and Simulation.
This was no ordinary academic exercise. It was Heritage-Based Education 5.0 in motion, Zimbabwe’s home-grown model for higher learning, which insists that universities exist not just to teach, but to produce, to innovate, and to industrialise. At HIT, the fourth pillar of Education 5.0, innovation, finds its truest expression in moments like this: students walking out of a classroom not with a grade, but with a registered company, a market-ready product, and a stake in the nation’s economic future.
From Coursework to Commerce
The New Venture Creation and Simulation course, facilitated by Engineer Shandirai Zongoro, is designed precisely for this leap. Rather than treating entrepreneurship as an abstract concept to be studied, the course pushes students through the full technopreneurial pipeline, from idea generation and business modelling to formal company registration and a path toward commercialisation.
Friday’s event was the capstone: a high-level venture presentation session where student teams pitched their company profiles, products, and growth strategies to an audience that mattered.
That audience included the Dean of the School of Business and Management Sciences, Mr. T. Zimucha, departmental chairpersons, HIT’s Intellectual Property Manager, the Senior Technology Transfer Officer, and representatives from industry. Their presence was no formality, it reflected the depth of the innovation ecosystem HIT has spent years building, one that links knowledge generation directly to enterprise development, technology transfer, and market uptake.
“More than the Registration of Companies”
Mr. J. Simuka, a Research Fellow in the School of Business and Management Sciences and coordinator of the event, captured the significance of the day when he addressed the gathering. He spoke of celebrating something larger than paperwork and certificates, the conversion of knowledge into entrepreneurial action, and the emergence of a new generation of innovators ready to shape Zimbabwe’s future and beyond.
For Simuka, the three new companies prove that HIT’s postgraduate students have internalised the institution’s entire innovation value chain, from ideation and incubation through to technology transfer and commercialisation. It is, he noted, a reaffirmation of HIT’s institutional commitment to producing not merely graduates, but creators of industries, generators of employment, and architects of a knowledge-based economy.
Three Ventures, Three Zimbabwean Challenges
Each of the new companies tackles a problem rooted firmly in Zimbabwe’s developmental reality.
Longstore Technologies, founded by Stella Makina, Caroline Chibanda, and Blessing Marowa, is bringing solar-powered cooling-as-a-service to the country’s fresh produce markets, a direct response to the post-harvest losses that quietly erode rural livelihoods every season. By marrying renewable energy with agricultural logistics, the venture aims to strengthen food security and put more value back into the hands of farmers and traders.
Zarura EcoReclaim, established by Given Mabande, Blessings Moyo, and Edson Mushati, is reimagining waste not as a problem but as an opportunity. Built on circular economy principles, the company is positioning itself at the centre of Zimbabwe’s emerging waste-to-resource economy, turning environmental liabilities into green entrepreneurship and resource recovery streams.
Sileton, founded by Albert Grander, Tapfumanei D. Java, Webson Mushamiviri, and Sizo Sinyolo, is addressing one of agriculture’s most persistent bottlenecks: trust. The venture is building infrastructure to bring transparency and accessibility to agricultural financing, aiming to unlock capital for farmers and give financial institutions the confidence to lend into the sector.
A Mandate Fulfilled
None of these ventures exist in isolation from the national agenda. Their founders have deliberately aligned their business models with the National Development Strategy 2 (NDS2), the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and Zimbabwe’s Vision 2030 ambition of reaching an Upper-Middle-Income status. In doing so, they embody exactly what HIT’s mandate; developing, incubating, transferring and commercialising technology for rapid national industrialisation through the production of graduates who build the economy they will inherit, rather than wait for it to be built for them.
The Master of Technology in Strategy and Innovation, one of the flagship programmes in the School of Business and Management Sciences, exists to cultivate precisely this kind of graduate, visionary, strategically minded, and equipped to convert disruption into opportunity. In a world being reshaped by rapid technological change and shifting market dynamics, the programme arms its students with advanced competencies in innovation management, strategic leadership, venture creation, and commercialisation.
Longstore Technologies, Zarura EcoReclaim, and Sileton now stand as living proof of a simple but powerful idea: that the future of entrepreneurship is not found in ideas alone, but in the discipline of turning those ideas into enterprises that generate real value for society.
HIT does not simply educate students, it cultivates innovators, develops entrepreneurs, and builds enterprises that shape the future.
