AC 2007-162: HP, WFEO AND CWIT: BUILDING ENGINEERING CAPACITY IN AFRICA

Engineering, including Information and Communication Technology (ICT), catalyzes economic growth for developing as well as developed countries. Engineering education and capacity building help build knowledge-based economies and alleviate poverty. This paper describes the role that HP University Relations, the World Federation of Engineering Organizations (WFEO) and the Center for Women and IT and its associated International Taskforce on Women and ICT are playing in Africa, leveraging and adapting a model developed by HP, WFEO and partners in Latin America. The paper describes specific activities to recruit and align HP internal stakeholders, to recruit government, university and industry stakeholders, to develop an African beachhead and a prototype for regional capacity building, to build in gender equity at each stage of the process, and to design for scaling throughout Africa, based on stakeholder engagement. The innovation for engineering education consists of building and leveraging multi-stakeholder megacommunities focused on building sustainable capacity through engineering education through strategic co-leadership by the private sector. .