Are Zambian engineers conservative thinkers?

Thu, 23 Mar 2017 10:00:08 +0000

By Simon Mwanza

But do not blame yourself if you are one of them because admittedly engineers are the ones to do the tough job of making things work.

These are men and women who always have the final say in terms of what is dependable.

However, there has always had to be a big component of conservative caution in how engineers do their work.

One man said when his family boards an aircraft, he wants to be on one assembled by the Earth’s most trustworthy engineers.

But what is essentially factual is that to have an idea for development is one thing, actually seeing it take off is wholly another.

It is, therefore, appreciated in many cases that people who have modelled themselves ‘inventor’ tend to have some personal features which are contradictory from those of the engineers

There is no doubt engineering depends on team work in which numbers of people, each with some technical speciality or particular experience, need to work together to project and build multi-faceted systems.

However other schools of thought have contended that engineers mostly prefer working for big organisations and tend to get narrower and narrower experience, making innovation more and more difficult.

Perhaps this is where most of our Zambian engineers fit in as they get themselves into a superb professional maze and hibernation such that their impact on the economic front always appears miasma.

So what is the role of our Zambian engineers today in relation to their role to the economic growth of the nation?

Not long ago Copperbelt University (CBU) visiting research fellow Professor Clive Chirwa  lamented that most Zambian engineers are mere  maintenance engineers and not innovative.

Prof Chirwa said it was sad that Zambia had to import products such as spoons which could be produced locally, say, from copper and indeed other base metals.

Oh he forgot to mention that Zambian bald-facedly imports buttons, tooth picks, sewing needles, razor blades and many other silly products, 52 years in our independence.

What about a bicycle made out of copper frame? If this does not disorientate your mind, nothing will.

When Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II of UK visited Zambia in 1979 a beautiful bed was designed and made for her from copper and sadly that also marked the end of that remarkable invention.

Where that bed has ended up nobody knows. Needless to state that Zambia could have been one of the world’s largest exporters of copper beds. This would have added value to our copper most of which is exported in raw form.

That is why Prof Chirwa precisely wants to see engineering profession in Zambia move to an advanced level of excellence. He is not alone on this view.

Former Transport, Works, Supply and Communication Minister Yamfwa Mukanga urged engineers in Zambia to ‘resurrect ‘and take up their correct positions of promoting the country economically.

Mr Mukanga said engineers needed to know that they had solutions to whatever problems that society faces and hence they should ‘resurrect’ by taking up their correct positions in the economy.

Mr Mukanga, who is a qualified engineer, said it was time engineers ‘resurrected’ and ensured that they contributed effectively to the development process of the nation.

Mr Mukanga urged engineers to carry out self- introspection on their contribution to the economy as there would be no sustainable development in the absence of engineers.

“As engineers, we need to know that we have the solution to whatever problems that this nation may have,

“All solutions we need are supposed to be engineering solutions. Without engineering, nothing can be done,” he said.

He wondered why EIZ  last year picked the Easter period for its symposium and AGM when the entire world were celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ but he later understood that engineers needed to resurrect in the manner they worked.

“Next time when we meet as engineers, we should have moved from one place to a higher level,

“Time has come when we need to inspire our children and those in schools to become engineers. I want to be one of the engineers who will have contributed to changes in the country,” he said.

And Engineering Institute of Zambia (EIZ president Bernard Chiwala at last year’s AGM thanked the Government for being supportive to the Institute in terms of funding.

“This year, the Government allocated K2.1 million to EIZ and we are grateful. There has been an appreciable movement in terms of membership and increasing profitability in the last two years,” he said.

That was all we heard from EIZ and surprisingly life goes on.

So one can safely say that engineers tend to shy away from deal-making and, as long as the work is interesting, they will go along for the ride.

Yet inventors, by contrast don’t tend to play kindly with others and are often highly adjusted to the likelihood of making private wealth.

The same blue story is true with our local authority’s engineers department which appear to have stopped functioning a few years after independence. Most of the so-called engineers in these departments cannot be said to be memorable persons in the room.

Motorists and pedestrians in cities and towns know the frustration they get from non-working traffic lights. In some cases it takes weeks and weeks before someone works on them.

In some silly instances all what is needed to make traffic lights functional is a mere replacement of blown bulbs.

Of course council engineers may have their own challenges, but still it does not add up. There is simply no commitment whatsoever. Council engineering departments are as good as dead.

India is one country in the world today which has perhaps the most developed cottage industry because of the interest and innovative engineers who have gone out of their way to invent ‘small’ tools to produce quality products, even for the export market.

Zambia produces tonnes and tonnes of maize year in year out, but not a single engineer has bothered to come up with a humble cornflake making machine to add value to Zambia’s food security. Zambia is seamlessly happy to waste its cherished foreign exchange to import these mueslis.

For starters, Eastern Province produces enormous amounts of ground nuts (peanuts) and the need for simpler machines to produce good quality peanut butter, cooking oil, sweets and perfume (yes perfume from peanuts) from this raw material cannot be overstressed. Still our Zambian engineers cannot be bothered.

In provinces where fish is abundant, value addition through canning is one activity which is not on the minds of our engineers because they are simply not interested in the gamble.

The Copperbelt is awash with bamboo forests which can be steadfast source of raw materials to produce exotic furniture for export, but every year these plants become targets of Devil fires which quickly reduce them to vestiges.

Simple machines are also absent in provinces like Southern and Western with good cattle population for making buttons and glue (from horns), leather shoes (sandals), butter, ice cream, cheese (from milk), corned beef and many other  by-products.

What about rice polishing and cigarette making machines?

Tonnes and tonnes of mangoes in Mongu in Western Province and Mtenguleni, Chipata, in Eastern Province go to waste each year due to lack of simple machines to produce high quality mango juice for both domestic and external markets.

Zambia is a landlocked country yet we have implausible reports of the country importing tooth picks from China. This is laughable!

Zambia is also a big producer of cement, certainly why can’t our road and chemical engineers sit down together and come up with enhanced road construction materials unlike to continue depending on Dr John Loudon McAdam a Scottish engineer and road-builder who invented “macadamisation”, for building roads with a smooth hard black surface.  By the way, Dr McAdam died on September 2, 1865.

Still in Zambia we have road engineers who after spending years at the university feel contented to darn pot holes on tarred roads with ordinary soil and walk with their heads high.

In a nut shell, it is daunting that our engineers continue to be pushed in the backyard of their own specialized fields for some unknown motives.

Minister of Higher Education Professor Nkandu Luo is of the same opinion about some of our top university graduates who have failed to live to their professional expectation.

To drive her point home, she recently sacked top management at our National Institute for Scientific and Industrial Research (NISIR) due non-performance and general torpor.

At the time of her action Prof Luo said Government will not allow inertia from officials flaunting flowery titles to hinder economic development of the nation.

And she was totally right when she said that  Zambia should have graduated way back to a rich country if investment in science and technology was enhanced.

And where does this statement put our Zambian scientists and engineers? In a basket going to heaven?

“I do not want a team of cadres but people with innovations that will ensure science develops our country’s economy,” she said.

Our own Finance Minister Felix Mutati was also recently on books when he condemned repair works on a  damaged section of Lumumba Road near  Family 24  mini-mart in Lusaka where our astute road engineers decided to patch up the washed away spot with brown soil dug from a nearby furrow.

These are individuals who spent years at the university probably where they learnt to mend potholes on tarred roads with soil. This is simply unalloyed engineering contempt all the way down.

But it is not only our road engineers who I suspect to be at fault.

Zambians boasts of chain of chemical, building, electrical, mechanical engineers, and many other disciplines who simply fail to tick and help this country develop economically.

Examples of shoddy or not work at all are many but still, our engineers are demanding hefty pay and other better conditions of service for literally doing nothing.

We all know that engineers have to spend a long time being intellectually trained. Only then can they apply conclusion, plan codes, standards and recognised methods to enable operative application.

May be after all, as in any profession, innovative thinking is often dispirited (despite what might be said to the contrary).

It is said that some of the best inventors can be technically naive and spend time on ideas which engineers could prove, from first ethics, were unsubstantiated.

Inventors however, almost never talk themselves out of trying things which look promising.

So until our local engineers move to an advanced level of excellence through serious innovations and inventions, theirs will be indeed a maintenance role forever for the sheer reason of  not being  innovative and that is not  just bad enough, it is a professional degradation of the worst form.

For now it is difficult to tell whether Zambian engineers have the adeptness and potential to become inventors. May be only time will tell.