Oct 19 2010 @ 14:27

Shifting the system: Harnessing the power of engineering to address poverty

This article appeared in the September/October issue of Engineering Dimensions, put out by the Professional Engineers of Ontario. Featuring our work in Malawi and Ghana, the article showcases the ways EWB is supporting systemic change.

Across Malawi, there are about 40,000 clean water points, such as wells and boreholes that, in theory, serve around 10.4 million Malawians. Yet, after five years working in Malawi’s water sector, EWB knows the reality of this is quite different.

The problem: 25 per cent of Malawi’s water points are broken and 15 per cent are clustered together, leading to inequitable distribution. As a result, only half of Malawi’s population has access to a functioning source of clean water.

Read » Shifting the system: Harnessing the power of engineering to address poverty

The impact of this reality is that thousands of Malawians perish each year from preventable water-borne diseases. The failure lies not in a lack of interest, funding or even the technology itself- rather; it’s a persistent and complex systemic breakdown.

“Solutions are rarely only technical, and in today’s world it is the organizational systems and the humans within them that make things run,” says Luisa Celis, P.Eng., who works with EWB’s governance and rural infrastructure team in Ghana. “This means that long-term sustainability takes more than a one-off project, and rather long-term systemic change; that requires patience and persistence.”

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