Name: Rachel Romenzo Kakololo
Role/Occupation: Civil Engineer at Roads Authority.
Country: Namibia
I recently interviewed Rachel Kakololo, a civil engineer and a member of both Engineers without Borders- Namibia (EWB-NA) and the Namibian Society of Engineers (NASE).
Kakololo graduated with a Bachelor in Engineering Degree from The Namibian University of Science and Technology (NUST) and subsequently started working for the Roads Authority. Her first project was the upgrading of the Windhoek-Okahandja road to dual carriageway. The experience has been embedded in her memory and has strengthen her resolve to spend her life in engineering, “I have always aspired to be in the deep-end of engineering, as I believed that is the best way to learn.”
Kakololo spent a great deal of her formative years in the village and when she later moved to the city, she noticed the discrepancy between the standard of living in the rural areas as compared to the cities, “standards of living in our rural areas needs to improve. My drive to put the extensive knowledge taught in engineering in practice was overpowering.” Hence she became part of a technical committee that was tasked with mass land servicing in order to address the issue of land and housing scarcity in the country.
With the launch of NASE in 2016 and the creation of EWB-NA as its social responsibility body, Kakololo saw an opportunity, “to involve a wider spectrum of technical professionals in solving community challenges collectively under one umbrella”. During the launch of NASE, EWB-NA established connections with Engineers without Borders- South Africa (EWB-SA) who warmheartedly endorsed the formation of EWB-NA. The recently concluded Namibian Engineering Week, saw EWB-SA Cofounder, Wiebke Toussaint give an insightful presentation on Community-centered engineering and the economical execution of projects. Kakololo hopes, “to grow these ties and encourage information sharing channels between EWB-NA and EWB-SA.”
Her duties within EWB-NA range from coordinating, liaising with community representatives, local councils and their engineers, which would entail working together on community based projects by volunteering expertise and time of the organisations engineers. EWB-NA’s open door policy enables members and the community to engage EWB-NA on issues affecting them and to find appropriate solutions. She is particularly passionate about the change in mindset, particularly amongst the Namibian youth, “I believe we all have immerse potential that can easily be unleashed under the right guidance.” Thus during the EWB-NA awareness drives, the organisation visits schools to encourage the youth to take up STEM careers. Not surprisingly, EWB-NA’s membership has grown over the years with technical professionals from all over the country ready to serve the community.
Kakololo feels that whilst working with EWB-NA to devise solutions to complex community problems, her “problem solving approaches have advanced… [and her] people skills have drastically improved too.” Kakololo has many projects under her belt and is currently working with Minds in Action and Friends in Education to enforce STEM education in school curriculums and is also aims to volunteer EWB-NA’s expertise on Ministry of Education infrastructure development projects. A long term problem that EWB-NA is trying to resolve is the flood and drought mitigation measures for the northern Namibian region.
Kakololo sadly notes that engineering has historically been an inhospitable profession for women and that this has made many women shy away from STEM careers; but she also positively reasons that recent statistics have shown an improvement in the number of women joining the STEM field. Kakololo believes that, “women bring unique traits to the profession; [women] are more observant than [their] male counterparts are; which aids [them] in leadership as [they] can quickly pin point strengths and weaknesses.” Her advise to aspiring engineers is to “never stop learning and develop an innovative mind-set, explore and always be ready to serve and give back to society through skills application.”
Read more about this determined engineer and her journey in the insightful interview below.
Rachel Romenzo Kakololo was interviewed by Dhruti Dheda, the founder of the African Steminist on behalf of Engineers without Borders- South Africa. The full interview can be found here.
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