New ICT university to open to SADC students from 2023

Zimbabwe plans to open a new state-run, specialised information and communications technology cyber security university next year with the objective of making it a premier institution of higher learning in that sector in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region.

The government is working to transform the Tel-One Centre for Learning (TCFL), the leading telecommunications training institute in the country operated by the state-run telecommunications company TelOne, into this centre of cyber security studies, offering diploma and certificate programmes in ICT for the SADC region.

Ray Machingura, Zimbabwe’s deputy minister of higher and tertiary education, innovation, science and technology development, told University World News that plans for the new university have been on the cards for some time.

“There are things they are working on and, when everything is in place and all the approvals have been made, the new university will definitely open in 2023 as planned,” he said.

According to a statement, the then TelOne managing director Chipo Mtasa said at a graduation ceremony back in 2019 that TelOne had come up with a master plan for the TCFL to become a university “which we expect to start rolling out in 2019 and to be completed by 2023”.

“The development will see us growing our student enrolment from the current 1,318 full-time students to 6,600,” Mtasa said at the time.

She confirmed to University World News in March, 2022 that the plans for the university are on track and the opening of the institution is still scheduled for 2023.

TCFL’s main mandate from its inception in the 1950s was to offer training to the organisation’s employees as well as to individual and corporate customers.

However, in 2002, it was certified as one of the SADC’s centres of excellence by the Southern African Transport and Communications Commission (SATCC), thereby enabling it to offer training services to the SADC region.

The TCFL runs a mixed-mode system of training in all the regions in Zimbabwe and offers online courses for students living outside Harare.

A statement by the Zimbabwe Council for Higher Education (ZIMCHE) said a team of experienced peer reviewers drawn from three local universities have conducted facilities inspection at the TelOne campus in Harare.

ZIMCHE was established in 2006 to accredit institutions of higher education, develop curricula and act as a regulator to determine and maintain standards of teaching, examinations, academic qualifications and research at institutions of higher education, as well as promote international cooperation and facilitate exchanges in higher education and assessing foreign qualifications.