Rangarirai Gavin Muchetu

It was on a cold July Sunday, approximately seven years after Zimbabwe got its independence, at a Chinhoyi Central Hospital in Mashonaland West, a little boy had to be cut out of his mother’s womb as the Caesarean section was the only way for this boy and his mother to survive. That little boy was to be named Rangarirai Gavin Muchetu.

Growing up in the rural areas of Hurungwe with my grandmother, I learnt about life at a very young age as I worked and provided labour on the fields and tended to cattle and goats after school. My father and mother lived in Harare, the capital city of Zimbabwe, even though their incomes were too low, they tried their best to make sure l had primary education.  Sengwe primary school was about 13km away from where we lived and there was no transportation to the school so we walked that distance every day. This greatly affected school grades as l also had to work in the fields early in the morning before going to school, especially during the rainy season. I remember the day that l turned from an average student at school to an excellent one. It was the day that my father came to the village and promised to take me to a Harare school if and only if I was able to be in the top five of my class. That was to mark the turn-around in my life as that very same term, through hard work, I got second place position in my third-grade class. From then on, I discovered that the most rewarding thing on earth was hard work. I developed the most powerful attribute, to set objectives; and sticking to them; and eventually achieving these set goals and objective. This simple promise by my father to take me to the big city transformed me into the ‘what l want is what l will get’ type of person. Even though I had to attend schools known only for poor resources and equally poor exam results, diligence, persistence and sheer desire to prosper propelled me excel.

With this mentality, l was able to attain my O-level and A-level with flying colours which saw me enrol at the University of Zimbabwe for an undergraduate degree in 2007. Zimbabwe was going through a period of extreme economic melt-down around this time. This meant that there hardly was any money for food let alone pay fees. This was the most trying time for me as college life became overwhelmingly difficult. I had to remain focused as most of my classmates left school to be ‘foreign currency dealers’ and some getting jobs as they started to view schooling as a waste of time. This is the time that I realised that I wanted to make a difference for the future generation. I wanted to make sure that no one in the future would have to go through such a period ever again.

This made me enrol for masters’ degree in 2011 and eventually PhD studies later in 2015 ( agricultural and applied economics) as this was the only way I would be an asset to my country in the future. The only way I could serve the future generation from going through such a period was if I go back to school and built my academic skills and be able to affect policies and economic programmes in the future at a higher level.