eBusiness Weekly
Business Writer
Harare Institute of Technology (HIT) is now earning over $25 million a month from the commercialisation of technologies it has invented in recent times as the education 5.0 policy begins to pay dividends to local universities.
The Institute has been inventing practical solutions for a broader spectrum of economic and social sectors.
According to HIT the strategy of commercialisation has been coming out very well but has not been shy of challenges, particularly in finding capital to create impact and volumes.
Resultantly, of the institution’s 18 technologies that could be commercialised, nine have made it to the industry, particularly the tap card which is now massively backed by CBZ and NMB, major players in the country’s financial sector.
Besides the tap card, some of the notable innovations made by the HIT include the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) bureau de change transaction system which monitors foreign currency allocations across the country, Local Authority Database System (LADS) which monitors rents and rates payments at local authorities and a universal payment system called Unipay among others.
The institution has also introduced a vehicle tracking solution that now monitors over 3000 individual vehicles and about 20 company vehicles.
Among the technology offerings developed at the institution is the Sahara fuel management system that is able to monitor fuel levels in the service station tanks electronically at the same time reflecting when the fuel is water contaminated.
This fuel solution has been adopted by close to 50 clients in Harare significantly taken by Trek service stations while Zuva has taken the solution for about 20 of its service stations.
These are deliverables of the education 5.0 strategy which is forming an ecosystem that enables the creation of the industry, encouraging tertiary institutions to come up with scientific and technical manpower which is central to local economic growth.
The idea being industrialisation should start at colleges and universities and spill over into economic sectors at the same token propelling technical education’s ability to speed up the country’s industrial development through developing skilled manpower.
HIT has since developed a startup policy that entitles the student and the staff to own about 60.1 percent of the technology, while the other 30 percent will go to investors, industry, or those who will be interested in the technology and the remainder goes to the university.
Addressing delegates at the National Competitiveness Commission (NCC) seminar held on Tuesday in Harare, HIT vice-chancellor, Dr Engineer Talon Garikayi, indicated that local tertiary institutions are incubating ideas that can be commercialised, pointing out that HIT had started to earn from technologies they have invented.
“I can safely say our commercialisation success rate is now at 50 percent, commercialisation is known not to exceed 20 percent globally. Sometimes we do license out, instead of formulating a company we simply receive royalties by giving the product to companies.
“In terms of the figure RBZ pays US$100 per each bureau de change per month so we expect about US$60 000 per month from them, in terms of payment gateways we are making close to $25 million which we are receiving per month as a university,” said Dr Engineer Garikayi.
Tap card, a payment solution used by ZUPCO, is one of the most popular innovations made by the institution, designed in a period when the country was facing cash challenges in the preceding years.
“At HIT when we heard about cash challenges we said how do we alleviate this challenge, the community wanted to use ZUPCO, and people needed to have cash and cash was very difficult to find, we developed tap card and the tap and go system, to date quarterly we are moving about $6, 5 billion which could have been cash,” said Dr Eng Garikayi as he revealed commercialisation gains made by the institution he superintends.
However, Dr Eng Garikayi bemoaned the lack of responsiveness to start-ups by the local business fraternity and government departments alike which he said had sometimes led to the adoption of some local inventions by foreign countries.
Further calling for the government to provide for a policy framework that props up local inventors.
“I think some of you heard that HIT invented a ventilator and it disappeared like that, the ventilator was made, tested on animals, tested on human beings and SAZ said they had no standard and none of the Zimbabwean companies funded the ventilators in Zimbabwe until SADC offered the funding and we now have a standard at Capetown University and we are now operating at Capetown University because no one supported us here,” he said.
