1-3 September, Nairobi – On the occasion of the Africa Engineering Week, UNESCO in partnership with Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MoEST), National Commission for Science, Technology and Innovation (NACOSTI) and the University of Nairobi, organised a 3 day mentoring event to advocate for future engineers and their role for sustainable development. Increasing the visibility of engineering is the main goal of the Africa Engineering Week. UNESCO strongly believes the important role that engineers play for a secure and sustainable future. The event was designed to encourage girls and boys to pursue engineering studies and inform them of career opportunities in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) field. The mentoring session provided secondary school students to interact with engineering professors from various STEM fields and students at University of Nairobi.

Mentoring session consisted of a three-day immersion programme for 100 students from various boys’ and girls’ high schools in Kenya. The first day comprised mentoring talks from professional engineers working for the government, the private sector as well as the Engineering Department of the University of Nairobi. The role of engineers and their contributions to society were presented by various professors and graduate school students of engineering. Practical requirements to enter the engineering department as well as current research projects in working with private sectors were also presented. Throughout the whole event, great importance was attached to interaction, as the main purpose was to inform students about every aspect of engineering.

Professor Mbuthia, Dean of the School of Engineering of the University of Nairobi, in her opening remarks, stressed the importance of engineers as service deliverers for society. “As engineers we can contribute to 90% of the creation of a countries’ wealth and thereby improve the life of citizens and eliminate poverty. Engineers are needed to reach the Kenya Vision 2030 goals, based on statistics for the things we want to do in our country. We need engineers to realise those and this realisations in turn will create jobs themselves.”

Dr. Siphila Mumenya, a female civil and construction engineer from the School of Engineering, University of Nairobi, explained about the importance of STEM and basic requirement to become an engineer. She noted, whether it is “biology, physics, chemistry or mathematics, they are systems and models to describe a situation. As engineers become creative, we use basic sciences to manipulate and apply the laws of nature to design a solution”.Dr. Mumenya is one of the role models for the female students and also chairs the Department of Civil and Construction Engineering at the University of Nairobi.

Ruth Wangu, a recently graduated engineering student from the University of Nairobi, put theory into practice with the presentation of her graduation project, a self-balancing robot to showcase the importance of knowledge of the various basic sciences. In an interactive discussion, she challenged the students to analyse how the robot combines the different sciences.

In addition, Rosemary Gitonga, a retired female electrical engineer at the Kenya Power and Lighting Company, shared her duties going beyond her regular office job task but requiring both entrepreneurship and soft skills. She testified that being an engineer means “solving problems and coming out with an innovative solution”. The real world has to do with economy and will to make changes, ”therefore you must be an entrepreneur and let innovation and money-making go hand in hand with soft skills like marketing and sales.”

Following day, the students were divided in small groups to take part in laboratory exercises to learn more about engineering through hands-on activities and demonstrations. The laboratories belong to the various subdivisions in engineering, thus providing the students with a more practical idea of various STEM components. For example, Julie Ochieng, a 17-year old girl from Mary Leakey High School, reflected on her geospatial and space technology lab as a memorable experience. ”They use cameras to take pictures of the earth. It’s my first time to see this kind of thing. The labs are better than (normal) classes. It’s different because now we get to do things practically.”

Another 16-year old aspirant engineer from Mary Leaky High School “liked the mechanical lab most because it’s so interesting to learn about the way machines work. Things just move from one process to another and another. The machines are similar with those I saw at my grandfather’s place, but the technology is more advanced. We normally don’t have classes like these dealing with practice. This program reduces boredom in class, so it is really fun and exciting.”

Andrew Mwangi, from Thika High School reflected on the 3-day mentoring session as a positive experience. He commented, “this program encourages you in studying engineering. They take you to the labs and teach you basic concepts in university. High schools don’t have these labs. It’s too much equipment, especially for engineering. We learn a lot. It’s nice to see all these machines.”

The decline of engineers raises major concerns, as engineers are needed to overcome the global challenges like climate change and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals among others with sustainable and technology-based solutions and developments. Unknown, unloved unfortunately applies to engineering resulting in a global shortage of engineers and a declining enrolment of young people in university programmes, especially women and this particularly in Africa. This stands in marked contrast with the fact that engineer is one of the oldest professions in the world and as such has contributed to building and improving almost every aspect of human life.

One goal of the UNESCO Engineering Initiative (UEI) is to increase the number of students studying engineering at the tertiary level so as to maintain and improve the socio-economic development of societies. To ensure the world will have enough engineers for future sustainable development, it is necessary to encourage and inspire youth to take on contemporary challenges. It is in this context that UNESCO also organizes scientific Camps of Excellence on STEM within the framework of its science education activities for a secure and sustainable future for all. The camps address the gender inequality starting at a high school levels and provide girls with the necessary skills to pursue studies and a career in the sciences, engineering, technology and mathematics; while simultaneously becoming powerful agents for gender equality. The camps also seek to empower the girls to starts projects, activities and science clubs at school, to facilitate further mentorship and networking opportunities.