A ZIMBABWEAN student based in the United States is one of two who have been named Rhodes Scholars by the Zimbabwe Rhodes Scholarship selection committee.
Rutendo Chigora, a final year student at the University of Pennsylvania, won the prestigious award alongside Christopher Sherwood, studying mathematics with finance at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom.
“I was in complete disbelief . . . one of the things you hear about the Rhodes is that nobody applies for it expecting to get it — so in that moment that the national secretary said my name and Christopher’s, it all felt unreal,” she said.
“Now, I am just incredibly thankful for the opportunity and for the faith that the selection committee has placed in me.”
She paid tribute to her experience at her college in the United States.
“One of the hallmarks of the Penn experience is being enabled and supported to follow your ideas through as far as you can,” she said.
“The university’s commitment to undergraduate research and interdisciplinary study gave me so many opportunities to learn and create knowledge in ways that were meaningful for my personal and academic growth.
“There were so many resources for me to tap into whenever I was curious about something and even more of them when I beame decidedly passionate about social impact and development.”
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In addition to her academic achievements, Chigora founded http://www.zwconnect.org, a business incubator for Zimbabwean community centres geared towards weaning them off an absolute reliance on donations.
Chigora is a Benjamin Franklin Scholar at Penn, recognised for her capacity for interdisciplinary study, a member of the Onyx Senior Honour Society, and is involved in several extracurricular activities at Penn.
She was also a recipient of the Joshua Nkomo Scholarship at ‘O’ Level. At Oxford, she intends to join the Blavatnik School of Government’s Master of Public Policy programme.
Chigora emulates previous recipients Naseemah Mohamed and Dalumuzi Mhlanga, both from Bulawayo, who studied for first degrees at Harvard University in Massachusetts two years ago.
Previous US university-based Zimbabwean Rhodes Scholars include Sarah Jane Littleford who, like Chigora, studied at the University of Pennsylvania, Mutsa Mutembwa, who was at Indiana University, and Tafadzwa Muguwe, who earned a first degree at Swarthmore College and continued studies at Harvard Medical School after his Rhodes.
Rhodes Scholarships provide all expenses for two or three years of study at the University of Oxford in England, and most scholars work towards a master’s degree or DPhil.
In a statement, the selection committee described the Rhodes Scholarships as “postgraduate awards supporting outstanding all-round students at the University of Oxford, and providing transformative opportunities for exceptional individuals”.
Prominent Zimbabwean Rhodes Scholars include Arthur Mutambara, former deputy Prime Minister in the Government of National Unity, and James Manyika, President Barack Obama’s advisor to the Global Development Council and director of the McKinsey Global Institute.
— ZimPAS.
