When you visit an ECD school in Zimbabwe today, it is a beautiful sight. Tiny children in colourful uniforms, black and white, share the same classrooms, toys, and lunchboxes. At that level, there is no race, only innocence.
In primary school, the picture remains the same. Black and white pupils still sit together, learning the same alphabet, reciting the same national pledge, and dreaming the same dreams. Even in secondary school, although the ratio begins to shift, the mix is still visible. There are more black students than white, but the white students remain focused, confident, and quietly present.
When you reach the university level, something unexpected happens. The white students disappear. Walk through any state university campus today, such as UZ, MSU, NUST, or GZU, and you will notice that it is almost entirely black. The white students are gone, vanished like morning dew. Years later, when those black graduates enter the working world, the reversal becomes clear. The same classmates they sat with in kindergarten, or their children, are the ones who now own the companies. The black graduate becomes the manager, while the white former classmate becomes the owner.
What happened between ECD and the boardroom? The answer lies in what happens after the classroom. Both races start in similar places in early childhood, but somewhere along the way their goals, expectations, and mindsets diverge. When a black parent says, “My child must go to school,” they often mean, “So my child can get a good job.” When a white parent says the same words, they often mean, “So my child can run the family business better.” The black child is being prepared to survive within the system. The white child is being prepared to own it. Because education in Africa is largely designed to produce workers rather than owners, it naturally gives an advantage to those who already have something to inherit.
Our education system teaches compliance rather than creativity. We learn how to follow rules, not how to write them. We memorize history, but seldom create it. From Grade 1 to university, we are trained to pass exams, not to solve problems. We are discouraged from questioning and rewarded for copying. By the time we graduate, our dream is not innovation, but employment. We hope to join someone else’s dream factory instead of building our own. Meanwhile, those who exit formal school earlier are often guided into business, farming, or trade. While the black student is mastering theories, the white student is mastering inheritance.
For many white families, stopping formal education after O Level or A Level does not mean education has ended. It simply shifts locations, from classroom to office, farm, workshop, or boardroom. Their children begin learning about money, management, and systems long before adulthood. They are taught how to think, not what to think. On the other hand, many black parents, driven by hardship and hope, focus on helping their children escape suffering. In doing so, they often steer them into another form of struggle, the corporate rat race. We trade freedom for comfort. We celebrate employment instead of empowerment. We pursue degrees instead of dreams.
Fast forward a decade. The black graduate, now thirty, submits a CV to a white-owned company. He has more certificates, but less confidence. He understands academic theory, but not ownership. Meanwhile, the young employer may have no degree at all, yet he has land, capital, a workshop, and years of hands-on experience. He has been running things since he was a teenager. In that moment, it becomes clear that the difference was never race. It was training, timing, and mindset.
The way forward is not anger, but adjustment. We must re-educate ourselves and our children, teaching them to dream beyond employment. Entrepreneurship, innovation, money management, and problem-solving must become part of family culture, not just classroom instruction. Business conversations should be normal at the dinner table. Creativity should be rewarded alongside academic performance. The real world does not pay for how well we memorize. It pays for how well we monetize.
The tragedy of African education is that it equips us to serve systems we did not create. We learn how to fit in, not how to stand out. We graduate as professionals, but often live and die as dependents. Until we shift from wanting jobs to wanting to create them, we will continue producing black graduates who work for white teenagers.
As Jerry More Nyazungu writes in Miseducated Africa, “In Africa, we study to serve. Others study to own. That is why our degrees hang on the walls of those who never finished school.”
