Why engineering remains a male dominated profession in Tanzania

may not be adequately educated to meet the demand that will be expected out of their profession during the next decade in the ongoing changing scenario worldwide.

Engineers, architects or planners of tomorrow for instance need to be conversant with several other allied skills outside their major discipline, failure of which effective communication might be extremely difficult in the multidisciplinary team that will develop next–generation products and services.

The first female engineers in Tanzania graduated in 1976; official statistics show that by 2009 only four per cent of all registered engineers in the East African countries were women.

However, the government of Tanzania through the Engineers Registration Board (ERB) launched the structural engineers’ apprenticeship programme (SEAP) for the purpose of grooming graduate engineers and enabling them to be registered as professional engineers.

Under the SEAP programme, which is being implemented by ERB, Tanzania's professional body, with funding from the Norwegian government, the number of female engineers in Tanzania has more than doubled since 2010.

Over five years, the Norwegian government has provided 13.9 million Norwegian crowns ($1.65 million) in funds to support trainee female engineers, mostly in the form of a monthly living allowance and training for mentors.
"This programme ... aims to bring gender balance in professional training and to empower women engineers to manage their responsibilities.

Speaking recently in Dar es Salaam during the signing grant agreement with ERB, the Norwegian Ambassador to Tanzania, Hanne-Marie Kaarstad said “Since 2010 our cooperation has achieved great results: There are now more than 300 female engineer with the licence to work as professional engineers in Tanzania compared to our starting point of when there were 96 female engineers only.

According to the envoy the establishment of the SEAP in 2003 accelerated the pace of graduate engineers gaining work experience and fulfilling the requirements for registration.

“High dropout rates have been a problem since the start of the SEAP programme, and it has been more widespread among women. Financial constraints are the reason for most dropouts, as the trainees leave to find a job with income. The sad thing both for the dropouts, but also for society at large is that those who drop out never get to use their engineering education in a relevant job,” she explained.

That is why this programme has been so timely-by providing a monthly allowance to meet the trainees’ costs of subsistence more women have been enabled to complete the SEAP programme and register as engineers. And it works-the results speak for itself.

The envoy further said that engineering remains a male dominated profession in Tanzania as well as elsewhere in the world including Norway. But we hope that these women by being good professionals are challenging gender roles in a male dominated sector of society and open doors for women coming after them by being positive role models-this will be a positive additional effect of our support.

And we have already seen more signs of this, as we have witnessed women engineers starting their own companies and entering into management positions after completing SEAP. “My hopes are that more female engineers will attract young girls to study science subjects and then go on to study engineering,” she noted.

Tanzania and Norway have been partners in development cooperation for over 50 years. The cooperation is aligned with the overall development goals of the Tanzanian government and has evolved over time in line with Tanzania’s development needs.

The National Five year Development for the coming five years outlines the need to build competence and competitive human capital in areas relevant to industrial development.

Engineering skills of all kinds will be critical for Tanzania to reach its goal of industrialisation and transforming into a middle income country. And that is why this programme matters.

“I believe that empowering women not only in engineering, but in all sector will strengthen the society and economy of Tanzania. In Norway the integration of women into our labour force has been the main driver of economic growth since in 1970s. This is a free advice-if you want economic growth, make sure that you involve the women.

For his part, the deputy minister for works, transport and communication Engineer Edwin Ngonyani said that having recognised that it had very few registered engineers in 2003, the government of Tanzania through the Engineers Registration Board launched the SEAP programme for the purpose of grooming graduate engineers and enabling them to be registered professional engineers.

Since 2003, the government through the Ministry of Works has been allocating funds to support the programme. “The fund provided by the government is not sufficient to cater for all graduate trainees and needs support from other sources,” he said.

Realising the importance of developing professionals and particularly women engineers, the Engineers Registration Board requested the government through the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Dar es Salaam to support female engineers to participate in the programme, acquire professional competence and register as professional engineers and thereby increased the number of registered female professional engineers.

Eng. Ngonyani has urged other development partners and the engineering community to borrow a leaf from the Norwegian Embassy and collaborate with the government to support the programme.”As a nation our vision is now to have a middle income country hence this continued support is extremely needed particularly for women inclusion in our industrialisation goal,” he explained.

According to Eng. Ngonyani, the USD 2 million will be able to support around 150 female engineers in the next five years. He said that the number of trainees has been minimised because the allowances to the engineers has also been increased.

Speaking earlier on behalf of the board, the Chairman of ERB Professor Ninatubu Lema commended the Norwegian government for their support to the Tanzanian female engineers in the country in the last five years.

“Female engineers are now more confident in their studies as well as in their work places, because of your support,” he said.

According to Professor Lema the number of graduates every year is around 2000 students graduating from different universities in the country. “Our task at ERB is to transform these graduate engineers into professionals, even more than what it was before,” he noted.

Prof Lema further noted “As the fifth government was struggling to achieve the middle income status for the nation, I think one of the critical inputs in this last process is qualified manpower, qualified skilled human resources.

These are extremely more important factors that would enable our country attain its industrialised middle income economy,” he urged.

“We are going to utilise every support you are giving to ERB properly for the intended purpose,” he promised.