By Newton M. Mambande
St Dominic’s High School – Financial Economics Analysis
1. INTRODUCTION: THE OBSERVATION
MUTARE – When the future of business walked into St Dominic’s High School in Mutare on 25 September 2026, it did not come in a textbook. It came in prototypes, pitch decks, capitalization tables and confident teenagers who could explain their profit margins, customer acquisition cost and shareholder value better than most adults.
This was the Junior Achievement Zimbabwe (JAZ) 2026 Manicaland Provincial Company of the Year Competition, held under the theme “AI: Augment Innovation.” The hall was packed with young CEOs and CFOs from Gaza High School, St Dominic’s High School, Ellis Gladhill High School, Kriste Mambo High School, St Faith’s High School and other schools across the province.
I was not sitting as a judge on a panel to judge student exhibitions. I was invited to cover the event as an observer, industrialist and writer. And from a Business Management Science lens, I left with one clear verdict: Junior Achievement Zimbabwe is teaching what our formal classrooms are not — it is teaching economic productivity.
2, MANAGEMENT SCIENCE ANALYSIS: THE CURRICULUM GAP — THEORY VS PRACTICE
From a Management Science perspective, any education system must be evaluated on three outputs: Input Relevance, Process Efficiency and Output Productivity.
Our Input Relevance is obsolete. I spent the day interviewing educators and learners from Gaza, Kriste Mambo, St Faith’s, Ellis Gladhill and the host St Dominic’s. The sentiment was unanimous.
Both teachers and learners agreed: the JAZ economics education programme is more practical and realistic because it is updated to the current commercial environment, while the Heritage-Based Curriculum and Cambridge syllabuses remain impractical and detached.
The most damning example is accounting and commerce. In our schools we are still teaching Form 5 learners how to write a cheque — a payment instrument last used in Zimbabwe in 2006, when the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe demonetised cheques, and since abolished by most commercial banks globally — and how to balance a manual cash book and ledger. Yet the market has moved to Zipit, InnBucks, Mukuru, SasaiRemit, WhatsApp Business Catalogues, Shopify and AI-driven e-commerce funnels. We teach entrepreneurship as a definition to memorise for ZIMSEC Paper 2. JAZ treats it as a company to register, a product to make, a market to face, a loss to absorb and a balance sheet to defend.
One Accounting teacher from Gaza High School whispered to me during tea break: “Mr Mambande, we teach demand and supply curves from 1990s textbooks. JAZ teaches these children from Chipinge and Mutare how to create demand using AI today.”
That is the painful truth we must confront.
3, FINANCIAL ECONOMICS ANALYSIS: CAPITAL FORMATION AND STOCK MARKET LITERACY
What stood out most at St Dominic’s was not just innovation, but financial sophistication — a core pillar of Financial Economics.
Students participating in the program proved that they can fundraise investment capital, issue shares in their student companies, allocate sweat equity and calculate dividend yield, and that they already understand stocks and stock exchange markets. They were discussing authorized share capital, shareholder value, capital growth and return on investment at 16 — concepts most university graduates only meet after graduation, once they are already employed.
From a financial economics standpoint, this is Capital Formation at grassroots level. While the traditional school system teaches learners to save US$1 in a piggy bank, JAZ teaches them to raise US$100 from 20 shareholders at $5 each, deploy it into inventory, turn it over three times, and return a 40% dividend. That is the exact model of the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange (ZSE) and Victoria Falls Stock Exchange (VFEX).
In the JAZ programme, a learner does not just learn about business. The learner learns how to build connections, be innovative, develop skills, attain financial literacy and master entrepreneurship practically. This is Human Capital Development that is directly convertible to GDP.
- THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: WHY OUR SCHOOL SYSTEM IS 40 YEARS BEHIND
This brings me to a theoretical critique that explains this gap.
As Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, argues: “Our traditional education system is 40 years behind the real world. It doesn’t teach you how to make money. It teaches you to have military discipline and to become a loyal employee.”
Kiyosaki traces this to history. The modern classroom system was introduced by Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor and Founder of Germany, in the late 19th century. Bismarck designed compulsory schooling not to create entrepreneurs, but to create loyal soldiers, compliant civil servants and obedient factory workers for the Prussian state. It was built on three pillars: punctuality, obedience and memorization. The bell, the uniform, the ranking, Position 1 to Position 45 — it is military discipline.
Zimbabwe inherited that Bismarckian model through the colonial system, and we have perfected it. We produce excellent employees who can follow instructions, but we struggle to produce employers who can create instructions and payrolls.
This is why, as one teacher attending the event told me with brutal honesty: “Most educated professionals and academics with the highest PhD degrees from reputable universities in Zimbabwe drive posh cars like Mercedes Benz, but they cannot afford to buy fuel and maintain their cars. They are asset-rich and cash-flow poor.”
That is Financial Illiteracy at the top. And it explains Africa’s paradox. Africa is richer in resources than any other continent — we have lithium, gold, diamonds, fertile land, water — and yet it is the poorest continent because its leadership is illiterate financially and economically. We are lagging behind in the field of economy not because we lack resources, but because we lack economic education. We know how to extract, but we don’t know how to value-add, how to list on VFEX, how to structure a royalty.
- BALANCED VIEW: THE VALUE OF OUR HERITAGE-BASED CURRICULUM
To be fair, we must also acknowledge what the current education system does right. To dismiss it wholesale would be dishonest.
One teacher from St Faith’s High School, defending the Heritage-Based Curriculum, correctly noted that the current education system in Zimbabwe produces patriots who appreciate our history, cultural heritage, indigenous knowledge systems and languages that can mould good leaders.
That is true and it is vital. JAZ does not teach a child to be Zimbabwean. The Heritage-Based Curriculum does. It teaches unhu/ubuntu; it teaches about Mbuya Nehanda, about Great Zimbabwe, about our liberation struggle, about ChiShona, IsiNdebele and indigenous food systems. That moulds cultural identity and good leadership. You cannot build a sustainable economy without cultural grounding. A CEO without patriotism will externalize everything.
The problem is not that Heritage-Based is useless. The problem is that it is incomplete. It produces culturally grounded patriots who are economically stranded. JAZ produces economically grounded entrepreneurs who still need cultural grounding. The two must be integrated.
- THE AI GAP AND THE SPIRIT OF TOGETHERNESS: A NEW MANAGEMENT PARADIGM
Artificial Intelligence is not in our school curriculum — not in Heritage-Based, not in Cambridge. Yet AI is already deciding who gets a job, who gets a loan and whose product is seen on TikTok.
At St Dominic’s, learners demonstrated how they used AI to conduct market research, to design logos, to price products and to automate customer feedback on WhatsApp Business. This is not theory. This is the real commercial marketplace.
What also humbled me was the management culture. From a Business Management Science view, traditional schools operate on Theory X — competition, ranking, fear. JAZ operates on Theory Y — collaboration.
Unlike the traditional school system, where learners fight for Position 1 and are ranked against each other, at JAZ there was a spirit of togetherness and teamwork. Learners from St Dominic’s were helping Gaza High fix their display. Ellis Gladhill was sharing packaging material with Kriste Mambo. St Faith’s was clapping for everyone. They were not competing for a prize. They were collaborating as future business partners, co-founders and supply chain partners. That is the real corporate world — ecosystem thinking over cut-throat competition.
- CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION*
We cannot continue to produce job-seekers in an economy that desperately needs job-creators.
Junior Achievement Zimbabwe has proven that if you expose a 16-year-old to company formation, to AI tools, to raising capital and to understanding the stock market, you give them an economic identity before they even write their final exams. If we integrate JAZ methodology into the formal curriculum — if we replace the cheque lesson with a VFEX listing simulation — we will solve youth unemployment.
My recommendation to the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education and to corporates: let JAZ be a compulsory co-curriculum from Form 1. And let corporates sponsor these student companies with seed capital, not donations.
Congratulations to all participating schools — Gaza High, St Dominic’s, Ellis Gladhill, Kriste Mambo and St Faith’s — you have made Manicaland proud. You are not the leaders of tomorrow. You are the CEOs of today, augmented by AI.
Newton M. Mambande is an entrepreneur, farmer and author. He was invited to cover the 2026 JAZ Manicaland Provincial Competition held at St Dominic’s High School, Mutare on 25 September 2026.
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