Tanzania Engineer

Today's Tanzania's newspaper with largest circulation was carrying an advertisement by the Engineers Registration Board on its front page. It was a long, eight-part message. It announced many changes to be carried out in the next few days, virtually overhauling the system that had been in place hitherto.

I am an engineer myself, and have been shifting uncomfortably whenever the talk of what engineers in this country are doing. Almost fifty years after independence, spewing out engineers from our prestiguous University of Dar-es-Salaam, we are still having foreign companies doing almost everything, from road works to ferries, from installing microwave networks to installing processing plants.

Where are those hundreds of engineers who graduated every year, with growing number of enrolments year after year (this is an unfortunate trait of universities and colleges in our land, the first thing that comes to the minds of chief executive officers with respect to growth is to increase the number of enrolments while classes, lecturers and other facilities remain unchanged--year after year). Yes, where are all these engineers? Someone may have done some tracer study but the findings are not all that widely known. Many had resorted to carrying out other moneymaking activities, not engineering, such as trading. They flourished, no wonder, because someone with brains to graduate in engineering is likely to find business a piece of cake. If you were to ask them, they would look at you in the eye, say the system in place is hostile, unsupportive etc. to engineers. They would be correct, though they would be saying that with a pang of conscience.

It is therefore with joy that I read an advert that signals regulators taking their correct part to bring respect back to engineering carreer in this country. This first stage may look like it is making things difficult for engineers (raised fees, requirement to possess certificate indicating you were tested and found fit for the job, etc.)

It has also come at the right time, when the iron and coal deposits in Mchuchuma and Kiwira are about to start being exploited, a feat expected to revive the dead iron and steel industry which hardly has a pulse left at present.

Any engineer in his right mind would appreciate ERB move.

Technology Crescendo

The past few days have seen what looks like a major change of affairs in the technology arena.

• Sandisk, holders of IP for nand flash drives, were doing the only too logical thing-placing media on micro-sd card with a USB sleeve to plug it into players. Now, micro-SD is a tiny weeny thingy no bigger than a SIM-card, but sizes as big as two gigabyte are in existence. Many phones have microSD slots, so it is nothing new, only placing of media such as music and videos in place of (ungainly) CDs and DVDs--all of five and a quarter inches diameter whose surface you can place a hundred micro-SDs which are even slimmer.
• Google teamed up with T-mobile to announce the coming of G1, a Google cellphone widely seen as a rival to much successful Apple's I-phone. Its build is no run-of-mill imitation of existing cellphone-it's got retractable querty keypad and a trackball. Some tech enthusiast has placed the two rivals side-by-side and compared them here. (if this link ever goes stale, ping me, I have saved the text somewhere.
• Like a powerful but aging elephant whose molars can no longer chew enough twigs to drive its huge body, therefore slowly starting to waste away, Microsoft have lately been trying to run catch-on (gaming, search) and not so successful upgrade (vista). Plus, the man whose name is synonymous with Microsoft, Bill Gates, recently retired early. If it weren't for shareholder, Microsoft trustees could have just convened and retired the titan of technology successes whose time has come, like a general who won many wars but has at last shown all the signs of aging.
• One of my recent posts was my concern about the European scientific project dubbed LHC. Something went wrong and they had to halt their experiment: about a ton of liquefied helium liberated itself back into atmosphere where it had been abducted from, rendering the superconducting magnets not so super--Talk of biblical Babel tower.