Africa-Press – Uganda. In the World Bank’s Science, Technology and Skills for Africa’s Report of March 2014 on improving the quality of engineering education and training in Africa, it was keenly noted that sub-Saharan Africa seriously lacks engineering capacity and relies heavily on imported expertise for two reasons—insufficient output from training institutions, and poor quality education and lack of practical experience among graduates. Yet Africa also has pressing development needs that require engineers.
The report highlighted a number of reasons why the countries needed to put together their own pool of engineers among which included factors like infrastructure needing to be built in step with the region’s economic growth trajectory, including roads, bridges, buildings, airports, and harbours, industrial development should be accelerated, especially in manufacturing, so that the region becomes a net exporter rather than importer of manufactured goods. Africa’s ever-increasing energy requirements should be met to overcome acute power shortages.
The region should also take control over mining its rich natural resources—especially minerals, oil and gas—and these resources should be refined before export.
Finally, it is estimated that a staggering 2.5 million new engineers and technicians will be needed just to achieve a single Millennium Development Goal; that of improved access to clean water and sanitation.
Although, over the years, the government has made some deliberate efforts in boosting the engineering sector through interventions like the Presidential Initiative on Science and Technology, increased percentage of science courses scholarships among other endeavours, there’s still a big gap that needs to be bridged when it comes to the aftermath of its pool of breeding young engineers upon graduation or even successive years that follow. There’s a need for deliberate affirmative action and supporting legal framework towards the country’s engineers that have been a product of its own efforts.
There is no doubt that the government has in the past few years spearheaded industrialisation in the country and constantly advocated the need of foreign investment into the manufacturing arena which is fairly progressing.
It equally needs to support its own pool of engineers through enabling policies and legal frameworks so that they can be at the fore front in occupying key technical positions within these mushrooming industries where possible or where not, atleast the policies necessitate a citizen assistant serving under the expatriate.
In this way, the country shall be adding potential to its own citizenry whilst empowering and grooming an army of young enterprising professionals with a cutting edge should the need of them ever arise for the state to set up its own facilities, there won’t be need to ferry in expatriates to do jobs that can be done by the native scientists or engineers for that matter.
So was the case that escalated India’s rapid industrialisation that saw companies like Tata, Bajaj among others out-competing foreign ones which were later sent parking because the native engineers were taking charge. Because in any case, just as the report on engineers for Africa: Identifying engineering capacity needs in sub-Saharan Africa of 2012 put it, “Lack of capacity at every level of the (engineering) profession is a substantive obstacle to achieving almost all development goals, from the provision of basic sanitation to the reduction of rural poverty.”
Maybe this might also serve as a solution to the Uganda Institute of Professional Engineers’ cries of low levels of registration for professional engineers, the young engineers having seen deliberate moves of such inclusion.
Solomon A. Mutagaya is a chemical and quality assurance engineer
