Conclusion and thoughts about engineering

Here is probably the last post of this blog, following the conclusion session that we had this Thursday.

We had an interesting last lecture, kind of discussion about the potentials and expectations of an engineer of this century. The demand of engineers is growing almost worldwide, with a higher demand in the south. This is encouraging, because I think it gives a positive view of engineers, which are seen as multidisciplinary people, not only focusing on one part of a problem.

I think it is really important to propose a course like sgt to us, in order to make us more conscience of the complexity of the world surrounding us, and in order to improve the future work that we will achieve, in different sectors. If I indeed have to work one day in a different culture, I will be happy to have had these times here to improve my adaptation and communication skills, and also to have a global view of actual world state.

"Thinking is not something that happens in our brain, but when people interact"

"Do things that you like, don't follow the flow; No tolerance for corruption, be open and honest"


I fully agree with the SGT philosophy:

 I think the multidisciplinary objective is met, and it is a really good association of competences.

How ICT changes the world

ICT, Information and Communication Technology, is the most important and changing sector of this decade, and it will probably stay like that during certain years. If it is quite fully developed in industrialized countries so that a majority of people have access to mobiles, pc, and other communication technologies, it is not especially the case in other parts of the world.

This particular study analyse the place of Africa in ICT world development.

ICT, a global changer

ICT changes everything, from the economy to the government, through people way of living. All these things are not the same any more since ICT invades our daily life. In this world revolution, Africa is not left out, thanks to a growing awareness of governments which try to include ICT in their development strategies.

After watching the two clips and the lecture of Matti Sinko, my first question was;

Why does everybody always need to follow the world development trends? Why is it essential that Africa follows the world way of development? Is it the only way to be happy and to survive in this world? Can't they have a happy life without ICT? This questioning is related to globalization, and to the fact that it seems impossible to try to live in another way than the one proposed by the world economic and technology leaders. Personally, I don't like this way of world development, because it imposes a way of living which is not especially the best.



ICT for education and development

In Uganda, women goes from village to village with a laptop, and uses it as a tool to teach people how to make little incomes, how to improve their way of life, how to learn basics. And one can indeed imagine the important source of information that can represent a computer, even without internet connection, but with some simple software. So are an easy way to provide information to people.


In Rwanda, IT is a growing sector, and governments are really aware of the potential that ICT represent. In that sense, they try to make it a central development point, because it is source of jobs and income. The objective is then to obtain an easier and cheaper communication network.

For example, we can hear about an old soldier who is now working in ICT technologies, because he's aware of the potential of these technologies.

A second example is given by the medical sector, which uses mobiles to synchronise their information, thanks to TRACNET, a real time mobile phone technology. TRACNET has the function of

• Collecting
• Storing
• Retrieving
• Disseminating

the information about medics management, about patients, etc.

This last example shows the adaptation of Rwanda in using new technologies to improve efficiently one piece of their society. And it is one example among others. So one can imagine that ICT can effectively improve the way of life of African people, and that it is probably not such a bad thing to bring to them these technologies, which can be seen as an almost infinite source of knowledge.



To end, I want to Thank Matti Sinko for his E-presentation.

How to involve community participation in Kibera ?

We had a participatory approach about waste management solutions for Kibera. 4 groups had to discuss and to organize the ideas of everyone, which were putted on the walls.

An interesting idea that came up from one of my classmates was the fact that in slums, or in African regions in general, the contact person is not government or municipalities, but most of the time it is a leader, kind of "chief" of a part of the population or region or ethnic group. These guys are the elders. It is like you don't take decisions without their agreement. It was really interesting point of view

The question that our group had to deal with was:

Community participation

How best to mobilize the community to improve their situation, what forms of organisation should be proposed? Propose a mobilization strategy.

Our group propositions are:

1. On field information gathering, in order to plan a hygiene action. contact with people and with the "leaders". It is important to get the point of view of the slums habitants, to know which problems they are facing, in their opinion, not in ours. It is not because a situation is not acceptable for me that it is for someone else. It is really important to be able to put themselves in the place of the other.
2. Get support of the leaders. They have to be convinced of the action we want to take.
3. Raise awareness of people. The mean to do that is to go forward with an "easy to understand idea". The most easy way to reach more people is to talk with easy to afford words, so the plan is to get a motto.

The motto we were thinking about was talking about "death", and "preventing death" thanks to some hygiene actions. The reason is that everybody is interested in his proper life, but if the motto was something like "improve your life quality", less people should care ("my life is ok", " I don't want to make efforts", etc.)

I heard some good and new ideas during this workshop, about leadership in Africa, hierarchy and so on.


During the workshop, I thought about a proposition to involve people in the hygiene problem: there would be some places in the slum where people can bring back their waste, sorted, and they would be paid in function of the weight of the waste they bring back. The waste would then be treated by companies or by municipalities.

One problem that this system involves is that people don't has interest in limiting the amount of waste. But cons they have an interest in cleaning all around. It should be a kind of diverted garbage collector system.

Open your eyes

here is the documentary that we where asked to watch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FejzHnFXR-w&NR=1

This document is so frustrating because of the lack of power we have to change this, and so encouraging because it shows the will of young people to make their place better. I don't really know what to think after seeing that, except the fact that it makes you want to help, but with a feeling of helplessness.

It is so amazing to see this kinds of clips or movies, because even if one knows that those situations exists, and even if one already saw these situations, one always end up forgetting this, going back to our civilized countries lives, speeding everything, remaining in our cocoon.


This was just a little reflection following the clip.


Something beautiful is the faith and the joy of life that those people can keep, even when facing such dramatic situations. This is illustrated by this video I found by watching some suggestions following previous one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H51Jby_2hZI&feature=related 

Waste, a major and difficult challenge of this century

Here comes another big issue faced by today's world, known as Solid Waste Management. full of complexity, it is in developing countries that SWM faces the biggest problems, representing a major public health and environmental concern especially in regards to the poorest part of population.

If the standard way of managing waste in developed countries is generally described as follows

The steps of reducing, reusing and recycling waste are often over passed in poor or developing countries, which leads to dramatic situations. The situation is so critical that the second most serious problem faced by city dwellers is insufficient solid waste management. This doesn't surprise me, because I can imagine the huge amount of work that should be done to manage this problem.

Some info to remember:

• one to two third of  of solid waste generated is not collected
• Total global MSW will increase by 37.3% between 2007 and 2011
• the rate of waste generation generally increases in direct proportion to that of a nation's advance in development. This means that for urbanizing zones, the problem of waste treatment will become bigger and bigger.
• One out of two people living in cities is relatively poor or worst, and therefore directly concerned about waste management of his city
• Municipal solid waste management (MSWM) represent between 20% and 50% of municipal budget. This represents considerable expenses, which explains in my opinion the negligence that municipalities can have in regard to it, without considering the health and ecological impacts, what is a pity.
• Individuals residing near or on disposal sites (illegal) are infected by gastrointestinal parasites, worms and related organisms 

This subject highlight a new challenge that will be faced by developing countries, and in this case especially by urban areas and peri-urban slums. Furthermore, Bad waste management involve water resources contamination, which is already a big problem for those areas. In order to improve life quality of slum dwellers, it is important to take into account not only one part of the challenges, but to conciliate many different and challenging aspects.

I will complete this topic with some solutions that exists to make clever usage of waste, but which need some organisation and some knowledges (biogasification, recycling, etc.)

Water ! How to make your conscience aware of the complexity ?

What best manner to realize a subject is tricky than by being involved in it?

That is the reason why our class was confronted with a realistic problem, namely a water management problem in phnom penh (Cambodia), in order to raise our conscience to the difficulties which exists in getting everyone to agree. I have to say it was not such a big issue during the course, because we were taking the role for only 2 hours, and that we were not real specialists in the subjects treated, so our verve was not so high. We rapidly agreed and were really open to other propositions, trying to get everyone happy. I'm afraid this should not be the case in reality, first of all because people should put their own interests in priority.

however, it was also good to realize which actors are affecting those discussions. unfortunately, 2 hours was a little bit less to fully conclude these discussions.

I found it surprising to hear in the little clip showed about the water problem in Phnom Penh the next sentence:

Rich people don't want to pay for water, because they think everything is due to them

This shows the mentality of people facing the water problem, and the idea that water is not so precious, but just an available resource. I think work should be done in those countries to give some value to water, to make it precious, to raise people conscience.

Water !

What an interesting subject was treated during this two hours lesson. And what an important subject also! I really enjoyed it.

what appears to be the most natural and available resource of the earth will probably be, in the same time, the most delicate and significant purpose of next century discussions. This is maybe the main point to remember from the lecture. And students seems to be aware of that, since 68% of the audience agreed, at the beginning of the lecture, with the next idea:

 

“If the wars of [20th] Century were fought over oil, 

the wars of the [21st] Century will be fought over water…

unless we change our approach to
managing this precious and vital resource”

Ismail Serageldin, World Bank Vice President in 1995

It could have been interesting to ask at the end of the lecture if the opinion of some students changed, but for my part it did not. We got a full overview of the involvement of water in different facets of the world.

Understanding climate changes begins with understanding water cycle.

A really interesting point of view was given about the renewable energy sources. Renewable energies is one of the most discussed subjects nowadays in the context of global energy needs, but what is less talked about is their implication with water. Who ever thought about the fact that 96,3% of the future renewable energy sources rely on water. Indeed, if it is obvious for hydropower, it is important to underline that Bioenergy needs water by the fact that plants needs water to grow.

This gives us a new way of thinking about water, which is not only a first necessity human resource, but also an indispensable tool for human activities. This highlights also the complex way we will have to deal with that resource, and which priority we will have to give to it. The question could be:

Energy growth, with economic background, or clear water for everyone, with health background?

I think the fight will be rude, because money is involved, and unscrupulous people will not hesitate to use water for their own business, instead of thinking "sustainable and social".