Muzinda Hub to provide corporates & entrepreneurs with tech skills, e-business training

Muzinda Hub, the Zimbabwean tech entrepreneurship and innovation hub which is part of mobile operator Econet Wireless, has spent the past year living up to its mandate to be a training centre and skills development entity.

It successfully took 1,000 young Zimbabweans through a software development and entreprenuership program and has now started offering mentorship to a handful of startup entrepreneurs that took part in its first entrepreneurship challenge.

To extend this skills development run into 2016, Muzinda Hub will be offering a course on digital skills and online business entreprenurship to local corporates and entrepreneurs. Unlike its software development program which was offered to 1,000 developers for free, the new course will have charges attached to it.

It’s not only an opportunity for Muzinda Hub to continue its work in training programs, but also to extend its revenue generation capacity. This will now include its software development services arm and paid-for skills development initiatives.

The course being offered to both entrepreneurs and corporates carries modules on;

• Digital skills training on a programming language of the learner’s choice
• Entrepreneurship training with a strong focus on doing business online
• Reverse mentorship – Muzinda Hub will pair a business person with some of the stars that came out of its 2015 cohort. The intention is for the students to learn from the young techies.

While the modules all seem pretty engaging, the most interesting bit appears to be the skills training in programming. For people living or working in an environment where technology is embraced, this might seem like an afterthought.

But for corporate executives or entrepreneurs who haven’t embraced digital skills development, this will likely come off as very unfamiliar territory. However, there have been countless talks on the virtues of programming, especially for entrepreneurs in the 21st century.

Programming provides an opportunity to use digital skills to create solutions and also activates problem solving capabilities, something that Muzinda is keen to cultivate among local business people and corporate decision makers.

Tendai Mashingaidze, the team lead at Muzinda Hub believes that as a skills centre they have a critical role to play locally in assisting business people to get the skills they need to tap into the digital economy.

 According to Mashingaidze, Muzinda is trying to equip business people with the skills that allow them to access other markets by selling their products and services to the growing users of the internet.

The details of the program will be shared in due course and entrepreneurs that feel they need to develop a better understanding of business delivery in the digital world are being encouraged to apply.