AFRICA HIRES FOREIGN ENGINEERS TO BUILD AFRICA
Dangote is building a refinery in Lamu. Kenya is hiring Indian engineers.
PLO Lumumba asked the question nobody wants to answer. Why are African industrial projects dependent on foreign technical expertise? Kenya has universities. Kenya has graduates. Kenya has engineers.
They are not being hired.
This is not a Kenyan problem. It is an African problem.
Nigeria hires Chinese engineers to build railways. Ghana hires Turkish engineers to build ports. DRC hires Chinese engineers to build mines. Angola hires Portuguese engineers to build refineries.
Every major project on the continent is designed and built by foreigners. The skills leave with them. The money leaves with them. The technology leaves with them.
Africa keeps the debt.
Why.
Because African universities do not teach you to build a refinery. They teach you to recite from a British curriculum designed for the colonial administration. They teach you to write essays in English and French. They teach you to admire Western literature and philosophy.
They do not teach you to solve African problems.
A Nigerian graduate can quote Shakespeare. He cannot design a turbine. He can write a thesis on the French Revolution. He cannot fix a power grid.
That is not education. That is indoctrination.
The British colonial curriculum was designed to produce clerks. People who could read orders, write reports, and obey instructions. It was never designed to produce engineers, industrialists, or innovators.
Seventy years after independence, Africa still uses the same system.
The result is predictable. Millions of graduates with degrees that cannot build anything. Thousands of engineers who cannot practice. Hundreds of universities that produce paper, not progress.
Meanwhile, India trains 1.5 million engineers a year. China trains 1.4 million. They build their own refineries. They build their own railways. They build their own satellites.
Africa has 60 percent of the world’s arable land. It imports 100 billion dollars in food every year.
Africa has vast mineral wealth. It exports raw materials and imports finished goods.
Africa has the youngest population in the world. It cannot employ them.
The problem is not that Africa is poor. The problem is that Africa is educated to be poor. Trained to admire the West. Trained to consume its products. Trained to think of its own knowledge as inferior
PLO Lumumba is right. Africa needs a new education system. One that teaches engineering, not literature. One that builds skills, not diplomas. One that solves African problems with African solutions.
But that will not happen while African leaders send their children to Oxford and Harvard and London School of Economics. They do not want their children to learn African solutions. They want them to be part of the Western elite.
The same elite that benefits from Africa’s dependence.
What happens when the continent with the world’s youngest population cannot teach its children how to build a bridge.
-AsaliNews
Lamentations are not a strategy. There’s nothing wrong with engineering syllabi in African universities. After studying at undergraduate level in Africa, many African engineers go on to graduate school in the West. So how do they qualify for graduate school in the West with inferior backgrounds? The author is talking nonsense. The solution lies in what kind of dialogue African engineers and scientists should be having with their governments. Engineering is a practical subject. After studying, there are hardly any opportunities to practise due to lack of industries to offer attachments.