Gwanda State University

Lupane State University was established through an act of the Zimbabwe parliament in 2004 and opened its doors to 14 pioneer students in the faculty of Agricultural Sciences in August 2005. The expansion of university education in Zimbabwe is part of government policy adopted at the onset of independence.

In 1980 the government of Zimbabwe embarked on a major programme to extend educational access to the hitherto under served at both primary and secondary school levels. This exercise was primarily meant to address historical imbalances in the human resource base born out of the discriminatory educational system prevalent before independence. By 1988 the enrolment in primary schools had risen from 819 000 in 1979 to 2.2 million, with enrolment in secondary schools rising from 66 000 to 653 353 over the same period. With such an expansion it became imperative that the ministry of higher and tertiary education had to provide more access to tertiary institutions so as to absorb more secondary school graduates in view of the influx of students at the sole university of Zimbabwe at that time.

It is thus not surprising that within a period of about fifteen years the government of Zimbabwe has facilitated the establishment of seven state universities and three more are earmarked to complete the cycle of provincial universities.