Engineering: issues, challenges and opportunities for development ...

ENGINEERING: ISSUES CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR DEVELOPMENTYet how is a country supposed to develop without engineers?This lack of capacity is arguably the single biggest barrier todevelopment faced by many developing countries as it liesat the very root of how progress is made. EWB members arealready role models for their peers and the next generationin their own countries, so perhaps by extension they willbecome more involved in engineering education in the countriesthat need engineers the most – to help inspire more andmore young people into engineering in the future and to helpbuild a better world.Young engineers are attracted to EWB groups as a means oftackling the global problems that they have heard about asthey have grown up. A key decision remains, however, aftergraduation. As new graduate engineers and active EWB membersthey face a dilemma: should they work for an engineeringcompany and become ‘an engineer’ or should they work fora charity and practice engineering to help lift people out ofpoverty? This should be a false choice. It is no longer plausiblefor engineers working in huge companies to come to tinyorganizations such as EWB groups to find a way to ‘save theworld’. Companies and governments will have to change theirmodus operandi and find ways to fight poverty, or they risklosing leading engineering talent.Finally, a key challenge for Engineers Without Borders groupsthemselves remains. EWB groups and their members are frequentlydescribed as having ‘huge potential’. Their challengeover the next decade is to realize that potential. They need tochange the game in international development, in the engineeringprofession, in engineering education and in societyat large. They have had a good start, but more remains to bedone.4.4.3 Engineers Against PovertyDouglas OakerveeThe United Nations Conference on Environment and Developmentheld in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 marked a turning pointin public expectations of the private sector. Companies hadalways contributed to development through promotinggrowth, creating jobs, supporting enterprise development,transferring technology and paying taxes, but participants atthe Rio ‘Earth Summit’ recognized that ‘business as usual’ wasa wholly inadequate response to the enormous global challengesthat we faced. Business, it was agreed, could and shoulddo more.It was against this background that independent non-governmentalorganization Engineers Against Poverty (EAP) wasestablished a few years later. Its name captures the desireamongst many in the profession to place science, engineeringand technology at the forefront of efforts to fight povertyand promote sustainable development. Supported by the UKDepartment for International Development and some of theUK’s leading engineering services companies, we began to Schoolchildren celebratea new bridge in Soweto East,Kenya, avoiding the opensewer below.© Joe Mulligan, EWB-UK)164