By Henry Masungo
For years, a person with a disability can fight to stay in school, overcome inaccessible learning materials, travel long distances to attend classes, acquire assistive technology and eventually graduate from a college or university.
Then comes the question: What happens next?
For many, the answer is painfully familiar: the job applications begin, interviews come and go, and the qualifications that took years to obtain remain largely unused.
I know this experience personally.
After obtaining a Master’s degree in Human Resources Management, I have applied for more than 50 jobs and attended approximately 20 interviews. Yet, as a visually impaired professional, I have encountered barriers that have sometimes made my disability more visible to prospective employers than my qualifications.
Today, academic consultancy is one of the ways I earn a living.
My experience is not an argument that persons with disabilities cannot find work. Rather, it raises a bigger question: Why does the journey from education to employment remain so difficult for people who have demonstrated that they can learn, qualify and acquire professional skills?
The journey of a person with a disability does not end at graduation. It moves from student, to graduate, to job seeker and, hopefully, to employee or entrepreneur. Unfortunately, barriers can emerge at every stage.
Job advertisements may be published in inaccessible formats. Online application systems may not work with screen readers. Written assessments may fail to accommodate different disabilities. Interview venues may be physically inaccessible. Even when a candidate reaches the interview, assumptions about disability can overshadow qualifications.
This creates what could be called “qualification without opportunity.”
Employer attitudes can be particularly damaging. Some employers may assume that a person with a disability will be less productive, require expensive accommodation, be unable to work independently or become an additional cost to the organisation.
One employer interviewed for this article was frank: the organisation does not currently employ persons with disabilities because it is focused on profit and considers accommodation expensive, particularly in a fragile economy.
While such concerns reflect genuine pressures facing businesses, they also reveal a fundamental problem: disability is too often viewed first as a cost rather than as a question of inclusion, skills and productivity.
The challenge is equally serious for vocational graduates. A person trained in leatherwork may have valuable practical skills but still struggle to turn those skills into a sustainable livelihood because of stigma, inadequate funding, limited markets and lack of business support.
For some graduates, the alternatives become informal trading, farming, freelancing, consultancy, creative work or entrepreneurship. These can provide important livelihoods, but they also require access to capital, technology, training, markets and business networks.
Zimbabwe has already recognised many of these challenges in policy. The National Disability Policy launched in 2021 provides for non-discrimination in recruitment and employment, employment based on skills and qualifications, reasonable accommodation, workplace adjustments, vocational and professional development, rehabilitation and employment data. It also calls for the promotion of private-sector employment through affirmative action and incentives.
The policy therefore provides an important foundation. The pressing issue is implementation.
If the policy promises reasonable accommodation, are graduates receiving it during recruitment? If employment data are required, are we able to determine how many qualified persons with disabilities are unemployed? If inclusion is a national commitment, how effectively are employers being supported and held accountable?
The solution requires action at several levels.
First, schools, vocational colleges and universities should strengthen career guidance, internships, mentorship and entrepreneurship programmes for students with disabilities.
Second, employers should create disability-inclusive internship and recruitment pathways so that graduates are not permanently trapped in the “no experience” cycle.
Third, recruitment systems and workplaces must become accessible, with reasonable accommodation treated as an essential component of inclusion rather than an optional expense. Fourth, government and financial institutions should expand access to entrepreneurship finance, equipment, markets, technology and business training.
Finally, reliable disability employment data must be collected to measure progress and identify gaps.
The issue is not about giving unqualified people preferential treatment. It is about ensuring that qualified people are not excluded because of assumptions about disability.
Education is supposed to open doors. For persons with disabilities, however, graduation can sometimes reveal another locked door—the door to employment.
Zimbabwe has made important policy commitments towards inclusion. The challenge now is to turn those commitments into opportunities that can be seen in workplaces, businesses and livelihoods.
The true measure of inclusive education should not be how many persons with disabilities graduate. It should be whether those graduates can use their knowledge, skills and qualifications to earn a living, achieve independence and contribute to the development of their country.
The question Zimbabwe must therefore confront is no longer simply, “Are persons with disabilities receiving education?”
It is:
“After they graduate, are we giving them a fair opportunity to work?”
