Promoting Entrepreneurship through Open and Distance Education in Zimbabwe. A Case Study of the Zimbabwe Open University Students at Masvingo Regional Campus

The re-engineering of the Zimbabwean economy in the contemporary environment characterized by globalization has attracted the attention of the domestic policy makers. This is shown by the commitment by government on the re-positioning of the economy through the formulation of the Ministry of Small and Medium Enterprise Development and the churning of the empowerment and indigenization policies. For these policies to reach fruition, Higher Education in the form of Open and Distance Learning has to shoulder the burden. In the quest for the country to forge ahead with the development of the economy, entrepreneurship development has to be promoted through the ODL platform. The current study used an open ended questionnaire administered to 50 students from the Zimbabwe Open University, Masvingo Regional Campus using the purposive sampling technique. The data collected were analyzed thematically and results showed that entrepreneurship education is vital for the enhancement of the economy and entrepreneurship education inadequacies cause business failures. It was therefore recommended that the ODL institutions should design short courses in entrepreneurship, compulsory course for entrepreneurship in all faculties and Higher Education curriculum to provide options for entrepreneurship development among university students.