Dr. Silver Mugisha, the managing director of the National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NWSC) has called on Ugandan engineers to embrace innovation and self-reliance, arguing that a focus on homegrown solutions is critical for building a resilient future.
Speaking at the 2025 Africa Engineering Week, Dr. Mugisha said engineers must move beyond traditional design roles to actively create tangible solutions and products.
He highlighted his own organization’s success since he took charge in 2013, citing a growth in serviced towns from 23 towns to over 282 and a remarkable increase in the company’s annual surplus from 34 billion to 150 billion Ugandan shillings.
Dr. Mugisha stressed that formal degrees are not the sole measure of engineering prowess.
He shared an example of Ugandan artisans who, despite having no formal engineering education, successfully created a flying helicopter prototype.
He challenged engineers to adopt a reverse engineering mindset, urging them to study how things work and understand the underlying concepts.
He pointed to artisans in Katwe who build complex machines like maize mills without formal training as an example of this practical approach.
“It is not formal degrees that matter in creating engineering solutions,” Dr. Mugisha said. “We engineers who have excelled at school… have succeeded a lot in using our knowledge to design things, but innovation, nothing much.”
The NWSC chief underscored the value of self-reliance, citing NWSC internal development of its billing, payment, and other digital systems.
He explained that this approach not only builds local capacity but also provides a major advantage in responding to cyber attacks. Mugisha noted that when NWSC was recently hacked, its in-house systems were restored in just two days, while outsourced systems took months to recover.
“What any human being has done anywhere on Earth, we should be able to do it,” Dr. Mugisha said. “So gone are days when you think this is made in America, this is made in China.”
The keynote was delivered during the Africa Engineering Week, a conference organized by the Federation of African Engineering Organizations (FAEO).
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