By Yamikani Sabola

Mzuzu, March 11, Mana: Minister of Higher Education, Dr. Jessie Kabwira has expressed satisfaction with progress of the construction works for an Entrepreneurs Training and Incubation Center (ETIC) at Mzuzu University (MZUNI) campus in Mzuzu.

Kabwira was speaking on Tuesday when she visited MZUNI campus to inspect progress of the project, which once completed, is expected to unleash the potential of youths through formal and informal skills transfer.

She said she was impressed that despite some challenges, the project, which started in November last year, has reached 10 percent completion rate.

“If in such few months we can see this kind of development, it shows that the contractors are fully committed to their work.

“Despite the rains, they have managed to reach this stage and they have made it clear that they would have been very far if it was not for the rains,” Kabwira said.

She said apart from being an investment in higher education, the project had created employment for Malawians, noting that all the people from the top management to the labourers were Malawians.  

Kabwira disclosed that, once completed, the ETIC will enable MZUNI to enroll 2, 000 more students, saying government understands that the country cannot develop or achieve Malawi 2063 without higher education.

“Government understands fully that success has to be constructed along education lines, especially higher education. This project will make MZUNI very pivotal in human capital development.

“Much more important, we are going to be dealing with entrepreneurship here. In other words, we will be training people to become entrepreneurs who will not be waiting for someone to employ them. They will actually be employing others, hence creating more job opportunities,” she said.

Projects Manager for the contractor, DEC Construction Limited, Ellard Malonda said he was optimistic they will complete the project in time, saying currently they are within schedule.

“We have set up the building, we have done excavations and we have also cast concrete footings and the bases. Now we have also done the columns. We now want to have walls for the foundation and then the slab,” Malonda said.

Among others, the ETIC will include a 500 seat lecture theater, 16 laboratories dedicated to artificial machinery, data science, ICT for development, internet, hardware and networking, energy and testing center.

The project is being funded by the World Bank through the International Development Association to a tune of US$100 million.