guest column:Peter Makwanya In 2019, Zimbabwe through the efforts of the Higher Education, Science and Technology minister, Professor Amon Murwira, launched innovation hubs at some of the country’s leading institutions of higher learning. These are University of Zimbabwe, National University of Science and Technology, Midlands State University and Chinhoyi University of Technology, Zimbabwe National Defence University, among others. These hubs were designed to upscale technological innovations in order to produce goods and services for the country. While these technology hubs appear complete in scope and design, there are critical and topical subjects like climate change which require a stand-alone entity, just like Centre for International Forestry Research, International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre, International Crop Research Institute for the SemiArid Tropics, Scientific and Industrial Research and Development, among others. This article unpacks why there is need for climate innovation centres as stand-alone entities in Zimbabwe. The pace at which climate change adaptation is unfolding, not only in Zimbabwe but in Sub-Saharan Africa, is not anything to go by. The climate innovation hub with its subsidiary centres in provinces and districts would plug the gaps established by the innovation hubs at universities. The climate innovation hubs, with their presence in provinces and districts, will be inclusive and instrumental in reaching out to communities in the marginal environments, whom, according to Sustainable Development Goals should not be left behind. These communities, due to their grassroot nature, are supposed to be at the heart of sustainable development. Leaving them out would marginalise them further socio-culturally, technologically, economically and environmentally. The biggest pitfall that is inherent in the country is that when authorities talk of research and innovation, they tend to down play the essential role played by the grassroots and the marginalised. That is the folly and monumental error of exclusion many developing countries commit. When researchers from developed countries come and visit the marginalised communities, locals tend to think that the aim of these visiting scholars would be to tell a bad story about Africa, but the truth is, that is where knowledge and information are. With climate change being one of the greatest story of the 21st century and also the mother of all deadlines, Climate innovation hubs dotted around the country would be a milestone achievement. These would improve knowledge, promote food security, manage hunger and diseases, stop environmental injustices and marginalisation. Climate innovation hubs are what developing countries need, in order to sufficiently adapt to climate change, increase their coping strategies and resilience. Developing countries still need environmental safeguarding and climate proofing to protect their natural resources and desist from exploiting forest resources for their livelihoods and minimise carbon emissions, in line with pos