How COVID-19 is transforming engineering in Africa

As African universities began to suffer from COVID-19-related restrictions, a picture began to emerge of how they might evolve in a pandemic or post-pandemic world.

University leaders have since started to paint a more precise outline of the long-term changes that may occur in how they function. But what will happen in a field such as engineering?

Engineering and applied sciences more generally are disciplines traditionally known for the ‘hands-on’ experience that students gain through laboratory work, field excursions, industrial placements and team-based problem-solving.


Around the world this is changing. How will remote learning affect how the engineers of tomorrow are being trained? What does the labour market hold for tomorrow’s graduates? And, despite the economic downturns whose effects will last beyond the end of the pandemic, how can universities learn from COVID-19 and strengthen how engineering is taught?

Resource scarcity in Sub-Saharan African higher education systems is exacerbating this situation in a context where engineering and applied science are seen as the key to development.

In addition, many systemic challenges are already hampering engineering education: ageing or immature infrastructure, lack of private-sector investment in research, equity in access to engineering education, and so on.

From students to engineers in a post-COVID-19 world

Clearly, the labour market is changing and engineering curricula need to keep up, but this has posed a serious challenge in Sub-Saharan Africa. Standardisation will become increasingly critical as calls for rapid adaptation to changing contexts mount. Accreditation of new programmes and curricula can be slow and bureaucratic.

The continent’s many large, well-respected public universities largely benefit from high education standards, while many small, private universities lack infrastructure and suffer from varying standards in education. What’s more, the pandemic threatens the very existence of a great number of them.

Ensuring a quality education in an online world means finding new ways to not only teach but assess students, ensuring that they have strong ‘traditional’ engineering skills, in addition to the new ICT skills that are becoming increasingly critical.

At the University of Lagos, where researchers are building new online curricula and virtual testing methods, the pandemic has provided opportunities for continued education despite university shutdowns. New virtual laboratories have the potential to change the way systems engineering is taught and have expanded their reach to include upskilling employees in companies and universities elsewhere in Nigeria, which will undoubtedly also be useful as part of a post-COVID recovery.

Not surprisingly, computer engineering and, more broadly, information and communication technologies, have long been able to innovate in a distance-learning and virtual-collaboration context.

During the pandemic period when most businesses struggled, ICT-led businesses around the world flourished; a sign that some STEM sectors are already able to move beyond just coping with the pandemic. But all other fields of engineering are also increasingly reliant on ICT. We need to adapt not only the technical tools that ICT has provided, but also some of its collaboration methods, training materials, and so on.

In Nairobi, Kenya, computer science students and graduates are using the opportunities provided by ICT and digitalisation to form ‘communities of learning’ based on tenets of shared learning and mentorship to enhance their skills and collaborate to tackle local problems.

While these communities are rich sources of talent, entrepreneurship and skills, local industry has still to tap in to these resources. Similarly, artificial intelligence will continue to become a core element of many fields. Engineers will need to have the skills to not only harness, but contribute to the development of AI and to ensure that it is used ethically and responsibly to benefit socio-economic development on the continent.

But we must also consider equity in access to these resources. Just as we know that women are disproportionately bearing the economic brunt of COVID-19, we need to examine the gender-specific impact on professions such as engineering in order to better understand how to mitigate them.

While more online learning holds the promise of reaching more people, it is not clear that the end result is broadening access to engineering education, particularly for groups that are traditionally excluded from it, for example, in rural areas where connectivity is limited. Data access is not free and online engineering education tends to be data-heavy.

Mitigating impacts and seizing the moment

If Africa seeks to change engineering, the pandemic and post-pandemic may present an opportunity. But any changes need to be done well. It is not just about new online training, but about changing the way students and graduates interact with employers.

More than before there is a need for a two-way flow of expertise and experience to better connect supply and demand. Engineering can be about upskilling as well as more formal traditional training methods. Firms will find themselves with very different needs in a post-pandemic world. There should be more opportunities for continuous learning, even after graduation, and universities may be able to play a greater role here.

But, with internships and industrial training as core elements of engineering programmes, economic slowdowns may significantly reduce the opportunities for students to gain ‘real-world’ experience. This means understanding the student experience in different types of internships.

In Tanzania and Rwanda, an ongoing project focused on the water management sector is combining problem-based learning with long-term co-curricular activities, such as industrial secondments or attachments, to engineering students and industries, in order to increase the employability of engineering graduates. It also means equipping students with the tools for entrepreneurship to contribute to socio-economic development of priority areas in a myriad of ways.

We need to better understand how remote learning and distance teamwork will have an impact on the preparedness of students for the labour market.

Tacit knowledge is generally transferred in person and, of course, in-person learning will eventually return, but there is also a sense that remote education, like remote work, will become increasingly prevalent. This means we need data, studies and a willingness on the part of policymakers to experiment and consider when it is appropriate to scale up different tools and methods that can make engineering education more efficient.

As the leaders of five teams that constitute an initiative to rethink ‘engineering ecosystems’ on the continent, our efforts, among those of many others in Sub-Saharan Africa, have become increasingly relevant in the face of the dramatic changes brought about by COVID-19.

Beyond the classroom

The temporary closure of labs and shifts in priorities (for instance, towards health) will also inevitably have a longer-term impact on engineering and applied science research.
Researchers need to be nimble and adaptable to demonstrate the role of engineering research, in particular collaborations between universities and the private sector, in the type of equitable and sustainable growth that the post-pandemic period needs.

More than ever, new sources of funding will be needed, in particular from the private sector, in order to make progress on the research front.

Yet this is also an opportunity to showcase how engineers can contribute to solving major challenges like COVID-19 and the problems of the post-COVID world. For example, chemical engineers in Côte d’Ivoire are using techniques for agricultural food waste from cashew farming to produce sanitising gel and design engineering students in Nigeria are printing PPE equipment.

Global funders and engineering-specific organisations such as the Royal Academy of Engineering have launched many calls to continue to spur on innovation. We should thus not overlook Africa’s contributions to fighting the pandemic, not least those of its engineers.

We should reflect on how the current travel restrictions and economic contexts are affecting those working in the profession. A lack of mobility may be greatly hindering the development of many professional engineers on the continent, but we know little about the impacts on the profession now and over the coming years.

For example, what challenges and opportunities await engineers in a period of cost-cutting by firms and governments who employ engineers? What possibilities are there for investment in public infrastructure aimed at jump-starting the economy or improving connectivity?

Will less temporary high-skilled foreign labour – in extractive sectors, for example – have a positive effect on home-grown engineering talent? How will firms deal with disruptions in global supply chains? How will current and prospective engineers cope with decreased access to networks and universities across Europe and North America?

We have an opportunity to change the narrative about what engineering is doing on the continent. But engineering should be examined in a holistic manner: from first-year university students to researchers to practising engineers and their professional organisations and perhaps even technicians.

Engineering can provide long-term solutions to address the Sustainable Development Goals, for instance, but it can also provide the tools for governments and civil society to face the kinds of emergency that COVID-19 has engendered.

Actors across ‘engineering ecosystems’, from universities to accreditation agencies to funders and professional organisations, can contribute to strengthening how engineering is taught.

Dr Matthew Wallace is based at the International Development Research Centre, Canada. Omotayo Fakinlede is a professor at the University of Lagos, Nigeria. Matthew Harsh is a professor at California Polytechnic State University, USA. Dr Victor Kongo works at Tanzania Water Partnership, Tanzania. Dr Ravtosh Bal is an independent consultant. Dr Ann Kingiri is based at the African Centre for Technology Studies, Kenya, and Dr Gussai Sheikheldin is based at the Science, Technology and Innovation Policy Research Organisation in Tanzania.