Congratulations Professor Grant Kululanga– Part II
Last week, we gave background to the event in December where Professor Grant Kululanga was inaugurated Professor of Engineering. Today, we will focus on what Professor Kululanga said in his inaugural lecture at the event. His Lecture was entitled, ‘Challenges of Engineering and the Way Forward for Developing Countries—The Case of Malawi.’
In the lecture, Professor Kululanga set out to understand trends in population growth for Malawi for the next few decades to the year 2050 and he then looked at the implications of that population growth on the services and utilities that are supplied by the practice and profession of engineering such as transportation, energy, food production, technology, medical technology, shelter, communication technology, water supply and so on and so forth.
It was quite revealing to learn that the population of Malawi will rise to 50 million people by 2050! Yes, I know that you are equally shocked to learn this! In fact, Professor Kululanga informed the gathering that as early as 2035, one half of Malawi’s population of 26 million people will be living in cities, living only the other half [12 million] in rural areas. Of the 12 million people living in urban areas in 2035, up to 70 percent will be living in the informal sector or slams.
A lot will have to be done to bring some order and some sanitation. “Imagine the traffic congestion, the sanitation, food, water supply….” Professor Kululanga challenged the audience.
These statistics left me scared of not just how difficult it will be for engineers to supply adequate capacity for the services and utilities such as roads, water, electricity and communication technology and sanitation, among others, but I was equally worried at personal level. I wondered whether I will still be competitive enough on the job market or in the business sector. I wondered whether I will be able to comfortably earn a living.
Everyone should be as worried as I am. Those that want to excel in the Malawi of 2035 or the Malawi of 2050, ought to be worried and ought to let the worries drive them towards making a good survival plan that must be executed with precision and with good control. You cannot afford to relax on such a plan. It is down to survival of the ‘fittest’! What is your survival plan? How will you become or remain competitive in 2035 or if you reach it, 2050? You have to address these questions not in 2035 or year 2050 but now!
We all need to constantly scan the environment around us and read the signs of times. We need to build today the skills and competences that will make us competitive tomorrow. We need to build today the profile and networks that we can use to survive or even to excel tomorrow. We should never be too comfortable. We need to constantly raise our game. We must always have a unique value proposition that makes people need us or customers to come to us. If we relax and feel too comfortable, then the world around us will go past us leaving us behind by the year 2035 or 2050.
The statistics that Professor Kululanga shared are scary and must be taken seriously by policy makers. At individual level too, each one of us needs to make personal plans that take into account the realities of the challenges that we will see in Malawi in 2035 and in 2050. As time goes by, we should do short courses to upgrade our knowledge. We should also constantly read widely to keep up to speed with the world around us. We should network a lot to constantly learn from others about what they do, about where the world is going and about new things evolving with time.
All the best as you rise and shine on the back of the revelation by Professor Grant Kululanga, which is a wakeup call on what Malawi will become in 2035 and 2050! All the best!
