By: Abram Molelemane and Nicholas Owsley

There is a common thread in arguments about the status of engineering in South Africa – that there are simply not enough black engineers.

Research shows that black engineers make up only 14% of South Africa’s professional engineers – those registered with the Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA).

This subpar representation, however, does not tell the whole story. Prior to 1992, there were no formally registered black engineers, according to an article in the April 2011 edition of The Journal of the Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy. Reason suggests that the apartheid education legacy would have created a ‘lag period’ for aspiring black engineers to register as professionals, as it would have been difficult for them to attain educational benchmarks. These numbers are now slowly making a turnaround.

One only needs to look at the number of candidates for professional engineering status, and the picture brightens, as some 47% of candidates are black. Broadening the assessment, the percentage of candidate engineering technologists who are black is at 72% and the proportion of black students enrolling for engineering degrees and diplomas has risen to above 60%, according to ECSA’s March 2013 member statistics. Despite these improvements, there is still room for greater black representation in the engineering industry, and a look at the industry as a whole reveals some worrying signs.

According to 2005 figures cited by ECSA, there is only one engineer for every 3 100 people in South Africa. This is one-tenth of the number of engineers in developed countries – in the UK, the number is one for every 310, in Germany it is one in every 200 and in Brazil, a country with which South Africa is often compared, owing to its middle-income status, there is an engineer for every 227 people. Further, the representation of women in the industry is highly disconcerting – only 3% of registered professional engineers in South Africa are women.

Despite these challenges, many companies in South Africa have taken it upon themselves to improve the situation. Among them is Lesedi Consulting Engineering, a black-owned KwaZulu-Natal-based engineering firm. Since its inception in 2010, the company has been creating employment and offering mentorship and hands-on experience to engineering students to help them complete their studies.

The firm was cofounded by managing members Theo Wilcox, Sibusiso Mncube and Clyde Pellew.

According to Wilcox, 40% of Lesedi’s permanent employees are women (significantly above the industry average), while 70% are youth. He says that Lesedi Consulting Engineering has always had a keen interest in employing women and youth, following a clear mandate to redress historical imbalances in South Africa.

One of the reasons behind the low number of black engineers in South Africa is a lack of mentorship opportunities and the right support structures for up-and-coming engineers. The 2012 Infrastructure Sector Research Survey (which was undertaken by the South African Institution of Civil Engineering and involved 75 companies in the infrastructure sector (including major engineering and construction firms), found that graduate hiring and training programmes were sorely needed to get talent into the industry.

In the absence of formal support structures, firms like Lesedi have taken responsibility for giving young black engineers the opportunity to excel in the industry. The firm provides training opportunities for students from higher learning institutes, and has converted a number of these into full-time employment positions. The company has also seen a drastic increase in its turnover since the 2010/11 financial year.

What makes Lesedi’s commitment to youth development so remarkable is that the business itself is only three years old, and most of its senior management could be classified as ‘youths’ themselves. The example that Lesedi, as a small and growing firm, is setting throws down the gauntlet to more established firms in the industry to turn their far deeper pool of resources towards development and transformation.

Lesedi’s case is not isolated. Other small firms, like the AM group, which was registered in 2008 and whose employees consist entirely of black engineers under the age of 30, are featuring more regularly on the South African engineering landscape. AM founder Anda Maqanda notes that the company, which specialises in overhead electrical power line construction and renewable energy, regularly competes with over 20 other proposals from small firms for any project management opportunities that arise. As the hurdles to creating a credible multifaceted engineering consultancy are high, so many of the smaller operators either merge with others or partner when it comes to submitting tenders. AM Group has done that to its advantage in the past, but is now in a position to offer a full spectrum of services, as it has grown significantly, says Maqanda.

Transformation in the industry is not only happening at small and medium-sized enterprise level – many of the giants in the sector have also made major inroads in terms of transformation.

Government, too, has played a major part. In 2001, the then Department of Education made a commitment to increasing the proportion of higher education enrolments in engineering, science and technology from 25% to 30% and to grow the percentage of black engineering students. Since then, change has taken place and the proportion of students enrolling for engineering, science and technology courses now exceeds 30%, while the percentage of black engineering students has also grown, according to the Advice and Monitoring Directorate Council on Higher Education’s 2009 State of Higher Education in South Africa. The total number of engineering students graduating from higher education institutions increased from only 3 100 to almost 10 000 between 2000 and 2010 (Seggie, E. (2012) SA’s Engineering Shortage Widens).

The new impetus from government and the growth of small, civic-minded youth- and black-empowered firms appear to be pushing South Africa’s engineering sector in the right direction. These changes, and the increased output of engineering graduates, are providing much-needed skills to tackle South Africa’s infrastructure and transformation demands, but comparisons with developed and even developing countries show that we still have some way to go.

• Molelemane is a third-year journalism student at Tshwane University of Technology and Owsley graduated from the University of Cape Town in 2012 with an honours degree in politics, philosophy and economics.