With South Africa’s growing engineering brain drain threatening to thwart innovation and economic growth, one entrepreneur in Durban is defying the odds to create profitable employment opportunities for graduates and trainees closer to home.

Mvusi Simo Ngcobo is the director of Top Cold, a KwaZulu-Natal-based refrigeration and gas installation company that manufactures and installs custom built-in fridges, cold rooms and transport refrigeration products for restaurants, grocery stores, farms, food processing factories and high-end homes.

Ngcobo’s skills are highly specialised — they took the better part of a decade to master through schooling and certification in Pretoria, practical experience in George and the creation of his own company.

Since launching Top Cold in 2014, the former SAPS officer has been using what he’s learnt to empower others, and changing the face of the industry in the process.

“I’m transferring skills and creating technical opportunities, and I hope in my own small way, I can help transform South Africa,” he says.

As South Africa skirts the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the impetus to transfer engineering skills has never been more pressing, stresses non-profit group, Engineers without Borders: “Numerous studies and reports show that South Africa does not have sufficient highly-skilled individuals to support its growing, increasingly sophisticated economy. There are simply not enough adequately trained engineers, technicians or artisans.”

Skills shortages and the over-politicisation of industry and infrastructure have already led to decreased competitiveness, productivity and the slow adoption of technology — as well as the loss of tens of thousands of jobs as companies decide to invest their capital in more productive sectors, the group adds.

The “brain drain” has long been a controversial issue in South Africa, according to University of Cape Town researchers who penned a study called, Assessing the South African Brain Drain.

As many as 100,000 South Africans are reported to have moved abroad to find greener pastures between 2006 and 2016, Statistics SA’s most recent community survey from 2016 reports.

However, those numbers could be much higher, Angela Ngyende, the agency’s director of census content development and products, told the non-partisan fact-checking organisation, Africa Check.

The South African Institution of Civil Engineering (SAICE) says it keeps its own tabs on members who move abroad for work and says their current figures are worrisome: “SAICE with 12,000 members is one of the biggest professional voluntary associations in the country and has in the past three years lost 1.73% of its members to emigration.”

The majority were between 30 and 60 years old, the institution states — a troubling statistic that could mean seasoned professionals aren’t passing on their skills to a younger generation of trainees and graduates.

As one of the first black South Africans working as a certified MerSETA (Mechanical, Engineering, and Related Skills Education Training Authority) technician in the province, Ngcobo understands the challenges that black graduates face when trying to break into the engineering profession or other specialised trades.

“The engineering students who come work with us are excited — they didn’t realise this sector exists, or that refrigeration is such a broad industry,” he says. “If you have the skills and knowledge, you can do almost anything — air conditioning, refrigeration, ventilation, heating, commercial, industrial or domestic.”

Having such a scarce skill means engineers and other technicians who choose to work in refrigeration won’t have trouble finding clients, he adds. “Engineers won’t need to leave the country and go elsewhere to find work. They will be able to create their own companies and employ others.”

TopCold is breaking gender stereotypes, too. “The refrigeration industry is almost completely male but right now I’ve got a female engineering trainee,” Ngcobo says.

He admits he had to overcome his own biases and traditional upbringing to promote diversity and equality, something he’ll never regret: “Out of all the trainees and employees I’ve had, she’s surprised me the most — she understands things quicker and better than anyone I’ve ever met.”

This, he adds, is how real transformation takes place. “We all need to break down our prejudices, and give people opportunities. It’s the only way to develop new skills and keep our young people here.”