The 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 enrollment in primary

schools had risen from 819 000 in 1979 to 2.2 million, with enrollment 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.