The Federation of African Engineering Organisations (FAEO) is developing a report that will assess and indicate the state of infrastructure in the Sub-Saharan African countries. The report, expected to be finalised in December and published around February 2022, will be used as a tool to show gaps in infrastructure that needs creation, maintenance or replacement, according to Martin Manuhwa, the immediate past president of FAEO. This was disclosed during a consultative meeting by the team in charge of developing this report on September 14 in Kigali, which was hosted by the Institution of Engineers Rwanda. Drawn from seven countries, members of the taskforce was selected to develop infrastructural report cards and combine them into one of South Sahara Africa report. Members are drawn from; Rwanda, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Manuhwa said; “If you cannot measure, you cannot manage. We need to go to every infrastructure that we have built and measure its condition and status, we will use our professional judgement to deliver scientific measurements.” What we noticed, he said, is that Africa is being judged by western standards which is not correct, “we also want to bring in our own perspective as African professionals into determination of quality and efficacy of our infrastructure.” He pointed out that by the time the report card is produced, it will put them in better position to influence policy in as regards infrastructure development. “It is therefore a policy instrument which engineers have to deliver to different stakeholders including government, development banks, insurance companies and the general public.” Steven Sabiiti, Executive Secretary, Institution of Engineers Rwanda said: “The overall objective of the project is to prepare Africa’s infrastructural report and correlate it with the UN indicators for the Sustainable Development Goals in the sub region, and Rwanda was selected as a candidate on the study.” According to Munuhwa, the report will also be used as a statistical tool to rank the level of infrastructure that Africa has so as to mobilise for financing and deploy resources where they are needed most. The general opinion on Africa’s infrastructure, he said, is a consensus that we have a long way to go, there is a need for human capital development and financial resources to make sure that Africa is coordinated in its development and has uniform standards. He urged the youth and women to join the engineering profession in order to increase the numbers with diversity, saying “there is a huge infrastructure gap in the world, the majority being in Africa.”
