Travel stories from Uganda and Tanzania: August 2022

Inspired, impressed, humbled, and motivated! Those are the words I want to use, to sum up, my intense and relatively short work trip to East Africa with Engineers Without Borders Sweden this summer. I'm humbled to finally be able to travel here to learn more about the situation and about the challenges many people are facing in both Tanzania and Uganda. But most importantly, I'm motivated to do more.

In Uganda, I got to meet six young, smart, passionate, and ambitious newly qualified engineers who themselves are trying to improve life for the next generation through humanitarian engineering. Together with the team on-site, we conducted workshops to find out more about their work and how we can collaborate in the matter - very much connected to the research I myself (try to) conduct here in Sweden.  

In Tanzania, the mission was to evaluate and try to improve a digitalization project that was carried out about two years ago in collaboration with Sandvik. A computer room has been installed at a girls-only secondary school with the aim to improve the opportunity for young girls to gain digital literacy. This led to a series of interviews and workshops with both students and teachers.

Before my trip, I was told some 'prejudices' and I had quite some expectations.  Some were true, such as that the people of Uganda and Tanzania are incredibly friendly and that there are many challenges related to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. In conclusion, I´m writing this primarily to raise awareness about EWB-SWE different projects and possibilities to engage and possibly inspire others to get engaged. 

By: Adam Mallalieu, team member Digitalization Project, Engineers Without Borders Sweden