Engineering In Africa Research Articles

Navigating biosafety regulatory frameworks for genetic engineering in Africa: a focus on genome editing and gene drive technologies.

This study investigates the regulatory frameworks governing genome editing and gene drive technologies in African countries, identifies common regulatory challenges and proposes actionable solutions. Primary data were collected through questionnaires and complemented by analysing existing biosafety regulations from online databases and scientific literature. Our findings suggest that while a few African countries have recently updated their regulatory frameworks, many are still under discussion. Challenges to development and implementation include limited resources, expertise, awareness, and public resistance. The findings underscore the urgent need for further development in regulatory capacities. By shedding light on these challenges, our study could provide African regulators with valuable insights to guide the formulation of effective regulatory frameworks. Such frameworks are essential for harnessing the potential of genome editing and gene drive technologies while safeguarding human health and the environment in Africa.

Crystal engineering in Africa

Susan A. Bourne, Delia A. Haynes and Patrice Kenfack Tsobnang introduce the CrystEngComm themed collection “Crystal engineering in Africa”.

Child Labour and Capitalist Social Engineering in Africa: Divorcing Society from the Means of Production

Abstract This article engages with some salient issues relating to child labour in colonial and post-colonial Africa. The central argument hinges on the inconclusive assault of capital on pre-capitalist socio-economic formation in Africa and the urgent intellectual task of liberating the study of child labour from humanitarian, United Nations and non-governmental organisation bureaucrats by privileging the voices of children themselves. The first section deals with historiographical issues, while the second focuses on agriculture, aspects of urban poverty and the emergence of a Lumpenproletariat to examine the transformation from above which took place after the colonial state was created at the turn of the century. The third section addresses two insidious categories of child labour in the post-colony: child trafficking and child soldiers. The final section grapples with the moral economy of child labour by interrogating the complex array of instruments that have emerged on the global scene to address what is today seen as the child labour ‘problem’.

Multidisciplinary Perspective on Requirement Engineering In Africa

In Africa, we have lots of projects and products worth huge amounts of money that are imported and some projects executed which do not necessarily conform with the immediate need of the people in the locality where they are sited or put in use. As a result such projects, products or services do not achieve their purpose of procurement or execution. Reason being that they are not suitable to the end-users/ consumers. The reason for such inefficiencies is that there was little or no prior thorough understudy of how best to meet the requirement of the end-users with respect to their environment where they are located before developing such products or carrying out such projects. For such occurrences to be curbed, the requirement of the stakeholders involved in the utility of the product has to be thoroughly considered so as to design a software or product model that will form a template for producing the right product that will meet the desired needs of the stakeholders or end –users correctly. This is the essence of requirement engineering in product development or project execution tailored to meet the need of the people they are meant for. Before carrying out product development, there should be inputs of professionals from different fields whose professional expertise is needful in developing a working template or model for the product in view. Keywords: Requirement, Convergence, Innovative products, Software, Model

Nurturing next-generation biomedical engineers in Africa: The impact of Innovators’ Summer Schools

The mission of healthcare systems in Africa to deliver compassionate and effective care has been constrained by growing populations, increasing burden of disease, political conflict and limited resources. The impacts of these constraints can be substantially alleviated, and the healthcare services strengthened, through the creation and adoption of affordable, accessible and appropriate biomedical engineering systems and technologies. There is an urgent need for building capacities in biomedical engineering, innovation and entrepreneurship in African countries. The African Biomedical Engineering Consortium has been organising a series of Innovators’ Summer Schools to meet this need by empowering students and researchers with entrepreneurial and innovative skills, and facilitating the design and development of robust, appropriate, and commercially viable medical systems and devices. In this paper, we analyse and discuss the impact of six of these schools held between 2012 and 2017. We used a questionnaire-based survey to collect responses from students who had attended the summer schools. The results of this study demonstrate that the teaching-learning model adopted in the ABEC summer schools was largely effective in promoting biomedical engineering skills, career choices, professional networks and partnerships amongst young African engineers and life scientists who attended the summer schools.

Chaos Engineering (Principles of Chaos Engineering) As the Pathway to Excellence and Relevance in Engineering Education in Africa

A study on engineering in sub-Saharan Africa revealed that engineering is pivotal for economic and social development of any country. This is profound as it underscores the potentials embedded in engineering education for excellence and relevance in Africa. This has not been the case in Africa, as the region has not developed evenly with other countries from the Global South. Hence, the impetus for chaos engineering as a panacea to excellence and relevance in engineering education in Africa. Chaos engineering has been defined by various authors and one of the profound definitions is that chaos engineering is the discipline of experimenting on a distributed system with the intent to build confidence in the system`s capability to withstand turbulent conditions during production. This study therefore looked at chaos engineering, its history and applicability and conceptualize it as a pathway for excellence and relevance in engineering education in Africa. Findings from the that engineering is pivotal for economic and social development of any country but it has not resulted to such in Africa which necessitates chaos principles. It was found out that experimentation is a basic principle of chaos engineering while the advanced principles are hypothesizing about steady state, vary real-world events, run experiments in production, automate experiments to run continuously, minimize blast radius. These all were conceptualized as the pathway to excellence and relevance in engineering education in Africa. The study recommended that there is a need to intensify effort on researching more into chaos engineering in Africa.

The potential role of European professors in the context of Rwandan civil engineering education: Reflections after a teaching experience

The number of students in civil engineering in some sub-Saharan African developing countries is strongly increasing, as consequence of an increasing demand of their capabilities. However, current efforts to educate civil engineers in Africa and, specifically, in Rwandan higher education institutions are hindered by the lack of local qualified teachers. On the other hand, in some European countries, university teachers are increasingly considering the effects of globalization on both civil engineering education and profession. In this situation, the educational potential of a European teacher can gain an innovative perspective, since it would be of great use if it were beneficial to a big number of students in a country where qualified teachers are scarce. It cannot be hidden that thanks to such a change of perspective, the inner motivation to carry out academic activity would also benefit. The Authors try answering three main questions: In which way a European teacher can contribute to civil engineering education in sub-Saharan Africa, with particular reference to the Rwandan context? What impact can a European type of teaching have in the Rwandan context, especially with regard to the methodological approach? How do Rwandan students perceive a learning experience with different characteristics from the usual ones? Beyond writing a report of the activities done during a personal teaching experience of one of the authors in a Rwandan university, this paper aims at explaining the lesson learnt from this experience, under both human and professional viewpoint. Although the experience of a single teacher has proved to be a privileged way to build a larger project in the framework of the Erasmus Plus program, which was subsequently eligible for funding, this paper is not focused on the network construction, but only on the preceding indispensable step. In fact, the paper describes on the one hand the challenges faced by the teacher during a direct teaching experience and, on the other hand, the results obtained and the perception by the students, expressed through an evaluation questionnaire. The paper proposes an example of successful and profitable experience of a European professor in the field of civil engineering in the context of a Rwandan higher education institution, with the awareness that it cannot become paradigmatic of a wider academic practice orientation, but at least an example of a professional way of being. This model offers opportunity of knowledge sharing, in the wider perspective of future Rwandan development, but it is also an opportunity for exchange in terms of culture and values.

Data networks and sustainability education in African universities

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a case study report of the development of data networks and initial connectivity in the Sub-Saharan African (SSA) region and how that development evolved into the formation of research and education (R & E) networks that enable new collaborations and curriculum potential. Design/methodology/approach – This case study is presented through the past 20 year’s operations and field activities of the Network Startup Resource Center (NSRC) at the University of Oregon, who in partnership with the National Science Foundation has worked together to significantly train network engineers in Africa on how to develop regional R & E networks that can link together the various research universities in SSA. Findings – The author shows how the development of these networks have fostered improved collaboration between African and US scientists, particularly around issues that relate to climate change. This paper contains testimonials from both scientists and on-the-ground key directors in Africa about the value of these improved networks. The expansion of regional R & E networks has allowed the Association of African Universities (AAU) to launch sustainable development as one of its new core programs over the period 2013-2017. Within this new core AAU program are four sub-themes: agriculture and food security, water resources management, climate change and energy. All of these themes will benefit directly from these new, network-enabled, data-sharing abilities. Practical implications – The current state of network-driven curriculum and curriculum exchange between African universities is assessed and compared that to that in the early days of academic network penetration (1990-2000) in the USA to find similar rates of evolution. Since 2015, SSA has sufficient network access and connectivity to now enable a wide variety of new collaborative research and collaborative academic programs. Originality/value – The experience and operational competence of the NSRC at the University of Oregon needs to be detailed and espoused. No other American university has had such an impact on Africa in terms of improving its overall network infrastructure enabling new kinds of collaborative research on real-world problems, such as climate change and resource depletion in Africa.

British Engineering and Africa, 1875-1914 by Casper Andersen (review)

Reviewed by: British Engineering and Africa, 1875-1914 by Casper Andersen Chandra D. Bhimull (bio) British Engineering and Africa, 1875-1914. By Casper Andersen. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011. Pp. x+229. $99. Casper Andersen's British Engineering and Africa, 1875-1914 is a thought-provoking book about the relationship between engineering and empire. Unlike other works that deal with this topic, its focus is on imperial projects imagined, arranged, evaluated, and contested in Britain, not the colonies. Written in dialogue with the new imperial history, Andersen avoids the pitfalls of diffusionism and Eurocentrism by insisting that empire manifested itself at home. Rather than examining empire as a thing out there in the world, he is adamant about tracking dynamic networks, investigating layered interactions, and probing messy nodes in the metropolitan center. Consequently, he draws readers into the complex ways the domination of far-off others shaped lives and livelihoods in Britain. Andersen deals with complicated themes, but his book is clearly written and nicely organized. The first chapter looks at the politics of professional journals, namely the circulation of imperial engineering dreams and the power of knowledge production. Chapter 2 offers a compelling spatial analysis of the London-based institutional sites where members of the engineering profession met. The third chapter grapples with specific engineering networks and their colonial interests, engagements, allies, and opponents, while the fourth provides a detailed analysis of the Institution of Civil Engineers and its explicit ties to the empire. The fifth chapter addresses the public life of the engineer, a figure whose cultural status ranged from gentleman to explorer. Chapter 6 concerns the modernizing efforts of and preservationist fears about dam building in the Nile Valley, a controversy that reveals the moral predicaments surrounding British engineering projects abroad. Who were the engineers? There were two types in Victorian through Edwardian Britain: military and civil. Andersen is interested in the civil, a [End Page 193] flexible term used to describe a wide range of scientifically minded experts who designed, planned, managed, and built. Within this broadly defined group, he is particularly interested in the pivotal efforts of a fascinating yet "contested and ambiguous" subset of practitioners known as consulting engineers (p. 5).Unlike most engineers, these specialists were "independent professionals," meaning that they did not work exclusively for private firms or the state (p. 6). Over time, as demand for their design expertise increased, consulting engineers grew in wealth, status, and power. Like the other engineers encountered in this book, they were highly influential men whose personal and professional identities were forged through and invested in the exploits of empire. Race is notably absent in Andersen's thoughtful and thorough work about British men and Africa. With a works-cited section that includes pieces by Edward Said and Homi Bhabha and an analysis that seeks to show how ideas about and projects in the colonies shaped as they were transformed by metropolitan life, this omission is surprising. How did race bear down on engineering projects and vice versa? How did whiteness and the privileges it enabled affect the engineering men? To what extent did race define the urban, elite, and discursive spaces that molded the profession? For those of us who deal with chronologies and cultures popularized by period dramas like Downton Abbey, heeding the postcolonial call to deconstruct racialized practices in their historical context is paramount. Given this gap, it is interesting that Andersen finds diaspora a productive way to think about British engineers in the world. Building on Robert Angus Buchanan's work, he deploys phrases such as "complex imperial diasporas" and "the diasporas of British engineers in Africa" to describe metropolitan men working in the territories (pp. 4, 9). On one hand, this is understandable. The word diaspora does connote the dispersal, spreading, or scattering of people and, as this book demonstrates, British engineers and their projects were strewn across Africa. On the other hand, as diaspora scholars have shown, diasporas are not usually voluntary: the people who tend to (be forced to) claim this subject position do so amid slavery, genocide, and other violence. Observations about the politics of difference, mobility, and displacement aside, this important work will stimulate discussion about the...

The need for a professional network of agricultural and biosystems engineers in Africa

Agricultural productivity in Africa remains the lowest in the world, but recent concerns about food insecurity, rising food prices and resource depletion have spurred world-wide interest about the role of African agriculture in feeding Africa and the world. Majority of world’s uncultivated agricultural land is in Africa, yet the capacity to harness this resource remains limited due partly to very low application of innovative technologies which contribute to improved factor productivity. Postharvest loss remains high in Africa due to inadequate infrastructure, limited agro-processing and other value addition activities, and lack of favourable policies. These challenges present unique opportunities for agricultural and biosystems engineers in Africa and around the world to come together as a critical mass of educators, researchers and thought leaders to drive the change needed to transform African agriculture. AfroAgEng will stimulate, promote and shape the education, research, policy and practice of agricultural and biosystems engineering in Africa.

Addressing South Africa's engineering skills gaps

PurposeThis paper aims to provide a case study of how engineering skills gaps are being addressed by Murray & Roberts in South Africa.Design/methodology/approachThe paper focuses on skills challenges in South Africa from a reflective practitioner perspective, exploring a case example from an industry leader.FindingsThe paper explores how Murray & Roberts, within the context of the broader construction industry in South Africa, has addressed skills shortages with an integrated, multi‐faceted approach with more general application.Research limitations/implicationsThe integrated approach to labour mobilization and development proposed has been successful in addressing major infrastructure construction projects. Further research will be needed to establish its broader application.Originality/valueThe paper pragmatically addresses live skills challenges, exploring creative solutions to the scarcity of skilled construction labour experience.

Wind engineering in Africa

The International Association for Wind Engineering (IAWE) has very few contacts in Africa, the second-largest continent. This paper reviews important wind-related African issues. They all require data on wind climate, which are very sparse in Africa. Wind engineering in Africa can assist in collecting data on wind climate, developing wind energy, reducing the adverse effects of wind and related drifting sand in building activities and agriculture, and limiting other wind-related disasters, in environment and ecology, such as those caused by erosion and fire. The paper aims to encourage Africa-oriented supportive research, especially better data coverage; quality control of existing data; search of historical archives; generation of data by numerical weather analyses; and validation of extrapolation techniques. We envisage promising cooperation with Africa, despite the fact that African countries do not currently participate in the international exchange and cooperation in these fields. African priorities presently seem to be different, while funds and other facilities are lacking. Capacity building in wind engineering and support issues should be initiated by agencies such as UNEP, FAO, EU, WMO, NGOs, etc. The necessity of professional wind engineering input in these activities should also be recognized. Interaction of IAWE with these agencies is necessary.