The importance of infopreneurship training for records and archives management students in Zimbabwe

Abstract

Unemployment has been on the rise over the years in Zimbabwe, and a lot of graduates have found themselves unemployed. Concurrently, the establishment, growth of state universities, and admissions into these universities has been on the rise. Most of the university graduates in the country have found themselves stuck at home with no employment and source of livelihood. These challenges have forced different stakeholders in the country to be innovative and come up with strategies to counter the high unemployment rate. Graduates from the department of Records and Archives Management (RAM) at the National University of Science and Technology (NUST), Zimbabwe, have not been spared from the unemployment problem as the inception of the programme came at a time when the economic meltdown was looming in the country. In 2011, the RAM department introduced a course in Infopreneurship which sought to empower students in the department with skills to start their businesses and even create employment for other information practitioners. This conceptual paper discusses the importance of equipping students with infopreneurial skills in a third world country like Zimbabwe.