Engineering for Community Development: Learning From The Wise Men In the Streets.

What is the difference between the kid at university and the kid back home in the streets? What about the kid in the ghetto and one in the affluent suburbs? Don't get it wrong, it's not going to be one of those usual analogies of how they all eat and go to the toilet, how they will all die one day- remember we will die one day but first we live. Again it's not one of those "most rich people didn't go to college!" So?

From time immemorial, stories of great men and women who broke through certain limits and challenged strong beliefs are told. The likes of Aristotle,Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Mother Theresa, Mahatma Gandhi to modern heroes like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk(My Favourite). All these stories serve to tell me one thing- history is made from anywhere and anything. From the garages, farms, colleges to the security guards, widows and the elite as well however one thing is common amongst all these stories- there was a profound understanding of a deep human need, followed by corresponding action to solve it.

Many times we get so carried away learning complex methods and systems in school so much that we end up forgetting that we only learn these to solve ordinary problems. We forget that all the math and science starts to make sense and pay when it solves a human need, when it impacts the life of the kid in the street, the farmer in the rural areas. The whole world revolves around problem solving. In fact the universe rewards us ONLY for solving problems! Of all the skills we can ever learn, the most lethal one is problem-solving. Yes, you can learn it!

The whole education system is set up around preparing people to solve daily challenges using the scarce resources available and accessible to us at a given moment. All of society's problems are human problems. I say this to say humans create these problems or they become victims to these problems but which ever way it happens they must learn to solve those problems. Needless to say problems gravitate towards their solution. Problems that we face or know of are the problems we can solve. Yes we can!

One day while presenting my final year project, one senior engineer asked, "what engineering problem are you solving?" I was dump-struck. "That's a societal problem and we are not historians or sociologist!" he exclaimed. I couldn't win the battle of wits so I conceded. But at the back of my mind I was like "well, do we need to solve engineering problems or we need to solve societal or human problems through engineering? Every problem is a human or societal problem. If it's not, it's also not worthy solving." Anyway I had to find an "engineering" problem- a fancy one, you know what I mean- some programmable sensors with lots of automation which noone needs, let alone afford it.

We are not what we study at school. We are simply who we are, kids from the streets, village bumpkins, uptown girls, fatherless children. We are in colleges to learn ways to solve our problems not to learn which problems to solve. We are a reflection of the communities that spawned our passion for learning. Yes a community of architects and engineers- we bulid the Great Zimbabwe with stones and no mortar and the monuments still stand centuries after. No, we hadn't built schools then. Back then the community was the school. It's not about times because our ancestors' architecture still inspires our modern generation. It's the timeless truth about our communities and how they shape our perspective about daily challenges and how they equip us naturally to solve the problems we face.

School or no school, we must learn to solve real problems. All we need is an understanding of those problems and a relentless passion to implement the solutions. There is so much we can learn from our communities. The leads to the solutions are everywhere around us- the ant building an anthill, a desperate farmer chasing warthogs at night by starting a fire, a peasant farmer scaring birds by hanging cassette ribbons around her garden and young graduates changing money in the streets.

The Engineering of societal development is not in complex Fourier and Laplace equations, its in understanding human challenges, analysing existing alternative options, formulating informed processes that solve problems using the minimum available resources. Everyone from the class to the streets can do this because even the most complex things were derived from the simplest of things in the streets.