President Robert Mugabe
Felex Share Harare Bureau
President Robert Mugabe yesterday took the concept of value addition and beneficiation a step up by dispatching 25 students to China for a one-year training course in diamond cutting and polishing.
This is the first batch of 50 students to go for such training in the Asian country this year while a similar number would follow every year until 2018.
President Mugabe has in the past years been championing value addition and beneficiation of minerals in Africa saying this was the only way member states could derive maximum benefit from their resources for the betterment of citizens’ lives.
Addressing the students at State House, President Mugabe said the sending of learners to China was a “step in the right direction” as it supported tenets of the government’s economic blueprint, Zim-Asset.
He said Zimbabwe had genuine diamonds not imitations and they should benefit everyone.
“This is what we should do when we talk about Zim-Asset, industrialisation, beneficiating, adding value,” he said.
“We don’t expect that this is done easily, it needs education. It’s transformation that takes place and it doesn’t just take place, you must have the skill, knowledge, experience and that’s the level we want most of our students to acquire.
“That practical orientation is vital and put your education into practice. Our diamonds are at the moment lying asleep underground and we must wake up, dig them up and let’s take the raw diamonds, cut and polish them. Some go the way of making trinkets, we may want our necks to be decorated, earrings and we need watches, decorations of all sorts.”
The Zimbabwe School of Mines is coordinating and managing the training of the students, which is funded by Harvest Way Diamond and Jewellery Private Limited.
The training is being done by Zheng Jingyi Vocational Technology School while the students have been drawn from all the 10 provinces in the country.
President Mugabe said on their return, the students should impart skills acquired on locals and this would be aided by a cutting and polishing centre that is on the cards.
“It’s not the fact of the certificate that’ll matter, it’s the fact now of your ability to use your hands to do what the certificate says you can do,” he said.
“This is the way we want to go. That’s when we dig out the diamonds we know the direction they’ll take.
“At the moment people just say ooh diamonds, diamonds, diamonds but even when we dig them out, so many carats and we just go with those carats they will not fetch as much as they’ll fetch when value will have been given to them.
“When you return, back home we’ll have prepared where you’ll do the cutting and polishing. We’ve looked at what our members are doing — Namibia, Botswana — and we’ve some knowledge of how they’ve travelled to what they’re now and we want to travel also to the levels where we sell finished goods, polished diamonds not just raw carats.”
He expressed gratitude to the Chinese for availing the facilities the students would use.
As such, President Mugabe said, the students were expected to be morally upright and focus on their studies.
“We look forward to them attending the course seriously and carefully applying themselves and coming back having acquired something,” he said.
“No one should come back having failed. I wish you well and we’ll be listening to hear how you’re progressing. Show the Chinese that you can do it and they’ll also be too happy to take others to do the same course.”
Zimbabwe School of Mines chief executive Dzingirai Tusai, said apart from value addition and beneficiation, the students would also train in processing of gemstones and gemstone enterprise management.
“The course is only done in China because we don’t have the equipment, expertise and other technical resources to do it ourselves,” he said.
“General economics is said to say that for every unpolished carat that is exported, the country is losing 10 hours of labour. As so said, once these trainees have been trained all those unpolished gems that we’re exporting will correct the value and benefit Zimbabwe.”
The send-off ceremony was witnessed by the two Vice Presidents, Emmerson Mnangagwa and Phelekezela Mphoko.