March 4, 2025, marked the fifth World Engineering Day for Sustainable Development, a UNESCO initiative highlighting engineers’ role in advancing energy, water, infrastructure, and innovation. While progress in energy and water sectors is evident, Africa struggles with unsustainable housing and transport infrastructure. The core issue lies in adopting foreign standards ill-suited to local realities, inflating costs and stifling innovation.
Many African nations have inherited infrastructure development ideals from former colonial powers, particularly the British, without considering their economic implications. Standards are not just technical guidelines; they serve as economic instruments that restrict market participation. For example, Rwanda cannot supply goods to Britain unless it adopts British standards—not because Rwandan products are harmful but due to embedded market protectionism.
This raises a crucial question: If a structure functions well outside the limits of foreign standards, is the problem with the structure or the standards? In Africa, even the costliest infrastructure projects often fail to meet international compliance. This is because these standards were designed for European commerce, not African realities. Many professionals in Africa mistakenly assume that applying these foreign standards makes them superior, unaware that they are enforcing a system that conflicts with local economic conditions.
The fundamental challenge lies in Africa’s value ecosystem of infrastructure development. In Europe, construction costs are structured around minimizing expensive labor—materials account for 20% of costs, labor 60%, and handling and technology 10% each. This justifies labor-reducing technologies like 3D-printed houses. In Africa, however, labor costs are much lower, and the cost breakdown is different: materials (50%), technology (20%), labor (10%), and logistics (20%). By adopting European labor-saving standards, African nations make construction unnecessarily expensive while remaining a lucrative dumping ground for outdated foreign technologies.
To reduce costs, Africa must redefine:
- Standards: Develop localized codes reflecting resource realities (e.g., prioritizing affordable materials over labor-saving tech).
- Commerce Structures: Align infrastructure goals with economic ecosystems.
- Developer Aptitude: Train professionals to innovate within local constraints.
- Ethics: Engineers must prioritize community needs over compliance with foreign norms.
- Decolonization: Shed colonial-era mindsets that equate “global standards” with superiority.
Sustainable solutions require rejecting one-size-fits-all approaches and embracing context-driven innovation. As we celebrate World Engineering Day, let’s champion standards that serve Africa—not foreign markets.
Dr. Eng. Apollo Buregyeya is a Lecturer of Civil Engineering at Makerere University, and a CEO of Eco Concrete Ltd.