Skilled engineers and technicians critical for rapid economic takeoff

Opinion and Analysis

Engineering students at Egerton University during a recent demonstration to protest what they termed the institution’s failure to register them with the Engineers Board of Kenya. PHOTO | SULEIMAN MBATIAH 

By GEORGE WACHIRA

In Summary

• Kenya must sufficiently develop these professionals to fuel the engine of growth

In the past few months when most of Europe was facing insurmountable challenges with the huge influx of Middle East refugees, the Germans saw an opportunity in the crisis.

For a nation with a declining population and fast-ageing workforce, Germany saw a huge reservoir from which to replace depleting skills. The country announced that it would receive nearly a million refugees.

The implications are that a large number of the refugees would be fast-tracked through Germany’s superior technical training systems to create replacement skills for their industries.

A win-win situation for a country that has maintained competitive global industrial and economic supremacy through technical up-skilling.

If Kenya wishes to climb the economic and industrialisation ladder like Germany, it should also emphasise development of quality engineering and technical skills.

Lately, Kenya has launched numerous economic development plans and projects, most of which require diverse technical skills.

Legal frameworks for engineering, technical and vocational skills development have already been launched and corresponding institutions created.
The pressing priority now is creating capacity for effective development of these skills.

This brings us to the ongoing debate on qualification and certification of engineers. It appears that the rapid and mostly uncoordinated expansion of university education over the past 10 years has created a number of engineering faculties that are insufficiently equipped to train competent graduates.

Most of the university expansion happened before the publication of the Engineers Act 2012 and hence the ongoing retroactive regulatory corrections.

The ultimate objective of the Engineers Act 2012 is to have only registered “professional engineers” undertake professional tasks in both public and private sectors.

The Act created the Engineers Board of Kenya (EBK) to essentially manage quality assurance systems for this profession.

Among the complaints by the EBK is below par qualifications and experience of the engineering faculty members in some new universities. Professional engineering lecturers are no doubt a prerequisite for preparing future professional engineers.

The other apparent issue is that a number of universities do not have sufficiently developed curriculum and programmes to meet basic engineering graduate standards.

Training equipment was also cited as either inadequate or obsolete to match the desired practical or theory ratio desired for a modern engineering curriculum.

It is encouraging to note that the affected universities have already undertaken to correct these inadequacies. This is good for the students affected by the dispute; for the reputation of the affected universities; and also for the integrity of the profession.

But the challenge does not necessarily end with graduating an engineer. To qualify for professional registration the graduate must undertake practical training that meets the minimum requirements defined by the EBK.

The challenge here is that we may not be having adequate openings for practical training prior to registration into professional engineering. This in effect slows down the pace at which we register professional engineers who are qualified and registered to enter the job market.

Establishment of a well coordinated and resourced national internship process for engineers is the next big thing that should already be happening.

It is the EBK who should spearhead creation of internship capacity which shall of necessity involve partnerships with the private sector.

There are also budgetary implications because interns will require sustenance when they are undergoing practical training. In deed we should replicate for engineers, the internship systems in place for doctors and lawyers.

It matters how we qualify and certify engineers because this has professional liability implications. This is because errors of commission and omission by an engineer can have catastrophic and expensive consequences, sometimes without a second chance to correct.

Again to work in international engineering fields, proof of professional certification is usually a requirement.

Technology

As science and technology have evolved over the past few decades, we have branched into many more specialised engineering disciplines (ICT, energy, petroleum, and environment, among others) which will also require regularising and certifying by EBK.

It is no longer the basic mechanical, electrical, civil, and agricultural and chemical engineering as many other specialised engineering disciplines have already emerged.

What I have said above about engineers training can be replicated for TVET (technical and vocational education training) of which we now have legal and regulatory framework.

We need to fast-track operationalisation of TVET systems, including quality assurance, so that we meet the needs of various economic sectors which are queuing for skills that meet their requirements in numbers and standards.

Like engineers, the technicians shall also require internship opportunities.

The demographic patterns in Germany are not isolated. Recent IMF studies project that by 2030 there shall be a net transfer of skills from Africa to Europe and Asia as populations there continue to age faster than Africa.

Kenya must ensure that it captures a sizeable share of those migrant job opportunities by developing a surplus pool of exportable engineering and technical skills that meet global standards.