Africans must take destiny into own hands — WFEO president
The President of the World Federation of Engineering Organisations (WFEO), Mustafa Shehu, has called on African engineering practitioners to influence policymakers to accept that everything developmental is engineering.
Advertisement
He was addressing the closing Banquet & Engineering Excellence Awards of the week-long 54th Annual General Meeting and 2024 Engineering Conference of the Ghana Institution of Engineering (GhIE).
Mr Shehu said every developmental project had an engineering solution, “so if it takes some of the engineering practitioners to enter into politics to change the narratives, it should be done”.
Projects
“All developmental projects are engineering, so we should not disappoint the next generation and generations unborn by building resilient infrastructure. It is no longer necessary to blame anybody outside our continent for our predicaments. We have all it takes to develop Africa ourselves,” he added.
The President of GhIE, Kwabena Bempong, used the occasion to express gratitude to the international guests from Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Burkina Faso. Fraternal gifts were presented by the President of the Nigerian Society of Engineers, Margaret Aina Oguntala, and the President of Sierra Leone Institution of Engineers (SLIE), Trudy Morgan, and they were received by Mr Bempong on behalf of GhIE.
Awards were presented to individuals and organisations that had made valuable contributions that have promoted key engineering solutions. Prof. Elsie Effah Kaufmann of the Maths and Science Quiz fame won the Distinguished Woman in Engineering award.
She also won the Projects/Practitioners Award. Erastus Asare Donkor of Multimedia Group won the Engineering Evangelism award. Academic City University College won the Innovation, Applied Science and Maths award (Tertiary), while the Young Innovators category was won by Afia Kobi Ampem Girls’ SHS (High School).
Winners
Other winners of the Engineering Excellence awards were Timothy Kofi Ametefe, who won the Outstanding Engineering Knowledge and Exemplary Achievement award; two entities, VRA (Kumasi Thermal Power Project Team) and GAMA Water and Sanitation Project, won the Implementation of Engineering Solutions awards; while SAYeTECH Company Ltd and VRA (Kpong Generation Station) won the Engineering Concepts and Innovation awards.
The rest of the award winners were: Dr Williams Ackaah, who won the Most Published Author in Engineering Award; The Engineering Business Management award was won by Akim Adio Tijani, and the Regional Water and Environmental Sanitation Centre Kumasi (RWESCK) won the Research & Academic-Industrial award.
At the ceremony, an Honorary Fellow was conferred on Dr Irene Stella Agyenim-Boateng, a Human Resources Management expert. The ceremony also saw 12 Engineering Practitioners who have distinguished themselves elevated to the Fellow status.
