While progress had been made in a number of areas in the South African engineering profession, a number of challenges also remained, with South Africa’s ratio of engineering professionals to citizens remaining much lower than that of other countries.

A newly released research report entitled ‘Engineers in a developing country: the profession and education of engineering professionals in South Africa’, by authors Renétte du Toit and Joan Roodt, highlighted that South Africa had only 473 engineers for every one-million citizens.

This was in comparison with other FIFA World Cup hosting countries, like Japan which has 3 306 engineers for every one-million citizens, the report, published by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) showed.

The authors said that even this was low compared with other developing countries like Chile, which has 1 460 engineers for every one-million citizens and Malaysia with 1 843 engineers for every one-million citizens.

The report noted that while there had been positive growth in engineering employment in South Africa between 1996 and 2005, most engineering professionals had moved on to the financial and business services sectors where they were not using their technical skills, but were rather working in a consulting capacity.

The research showed that in excess of 124 500 people a year were employed in engineering professional positions over the 1996 to 2005 timeframe.

Further, progress had been made in terms of racial transformation, the report noted, saying that this was clear in both the employment and graduation figures.

It stated that engineering graduation figures in 2005 were two-thirds black and one-third white, and while this was encouraging, there had also been a decline in the graduation numbers of coloured and Indian engineering professionals in proportion to African engineering professionals.

Although progress had been made with regard to transformation in the labour market, a shortage of black engineering professionals would continue to be a problem, stated the authors, saying that this was because it took time for engineering professionals to gain work experience.

The authors argued that government should perhaps base the its future equity targets for engineering professionals on engineering graduations and not on the country’s current demographics.

Further, the proportion of female to male engineers had declined over the timeframe, said the report, adding that the number of female engineering graduates from higher educations institutions was, however, currently increasing.

Despite this, there was still an insufficient number of experienced female engineers to assist with the training and development of young female engineers, the authors noted.

Overall, there was still a shortage of older and experienced professionals, which impacts on the transfer of skills to younger generations of engineers.

The authors stated that the underutilisation of professionals with an engineering-related qualification working in non engineering occupations was an issue that had to be dealt with.

The researchers suggested that incentives were needed to attract these qualified professionals back to the engineering field.

Further, the significant number of people working in the engineering field without proper qualifications was an issue that needed to be dealt with, while it was also necessary to create opportunities for students to get working experience, the report highlighted.

– A full version of this report is available on the HSRC’s website: www.hsrcpress.ac.za.