Development is about finding practical solutions to socio-economic challenges. It entails the use of technical skills and expertise of the kind you find among engineers. Yet engineering has been marginal to development practice over the last three decades.

This is partly because earlier designs of major infrastructure projects ignored a wide range of critical social, economic, and environmental factors. Large dams, for example, were associated with corruption, ecological harm, and social dislocation. Irrigation projects became breeding grounds for vectors of a variety of diseases. Large projects were also linked to macroeconomic distortions, especially those related to lending for questionable infrastructure projects. Such failures and poor maintenance of infrastructure project inspired international activism against engineering in general and large projects in particular.



This experience led to widespread skepticism over the role of engineering projects in development. Development agencies shied away from such projects or promoted approaches that underplayed the critical role of infrastructure in sustainable development.

The failure of subsequent development strategies has forced the international community to rethink the role of infrastructure and associated engineering activities. Engineering projects can help stimulate growth by contributing to sustainable development (for example, by creating job opportunities and raising agricultural productivity). They can also alleviate hunger by providing the physical infrastructure needed to advance agriculture. These technological measures themselves, however, do not solve the challenges of poverty and hunger. They must necessarily be part of an integrated strategy aimed at improving overall human welfare.



Africa’s ability to initiate and sustain economic growth depends in part on its capabilities in engineering, which in turn determines the capacity to provide clean water, good health care, adequate infrastructure, and safe food. Information and communications technologies (ICTs), which now impact nearly all fields of endeavor, can also play a critical role in expanding primary, secondary, and tertiary education. For example, ICT can facilitate distance learning and offering remote access to educational resources. Many other technologies hold the promise of significantly upgrading human welfare, especially for women, in Africa by improving energy sources, agricultural technology, and access to water and sanitation.



Effective health care is also dependent on infrastructure. Critical health interventions — including the treatment and prevention of malaria, HIV/AIDS, drug-resistant tuberculosis, and vitamin and other micronutrient deficiencies — require new treatments, new vaccines, and other strategies appropriate to local circumstance. Building domestic competence in fields like chemical and process engineering is critical to expanding the technological basis for improving healthcare. In this area, the ability to produce generic medicines holds the promise of improving poor people’s economic access to essential treatments. Engineering-based approaches such as redesigning houses and remodeling landscapes are examples of what can be done to help reduce mosquito breeding and malaria transmission, respectively. Improved engineering knowledge at the local level is indispensable for managing complex ecosystems, such as watersheds, forests, and seas, and for helping to manage the impact of climate change and the loss of biodiversity. Emerging fields such as industrial ecology offer new opportunities for addressing ecological challenges. Access to clean water requires continuous improvement in water supply and treatment technologies.



Technological innovation is becoming equally critical in the management of freshwater resources. For example, concern over water scarcity in agriculture is generating interest in alternative approaches that can reduce the amount of water used to produce a unit of grain. New challenges such as the threats of global warming demand greater investment in ecological engineering capabilities. Efforts should, therefore, be directed at providing support for institutions of higher technical learning that focus on building up domestic engineering capabilities. Failure to do so will result in countries that cannot keep up with basic economic maintenance.