Are we creating enough space for Namibia's young engineers?

Upon recently stepping down as president of the Engineering Professions Association of Namibia (EPA), I have been reflecting on an important question: if Namibia continues to produce engineering graduates, are we creating enough opportunities for them to enter and develop within the profession?

Engineering relies on a professional ‘pipeline’: graduate → candidate engineer → professionally registered engineer → senior specialist → technical leader. If this pipeline becomes blocked at entry level, the consequences may only become apparent years later through a shortage of experienced professionals.

A 2024 LinkedIn post by an unemployed Namibian engineering graduate pointed out that “the number of unemployed graduates is staggering, and that smaller firms just cannot pay good enough salaries”. He suggested that perhaps the industry might be experiencing saturation.

Similarly, in a 2025 conversation, a former Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST) student told me he had secured work at an engineering consultancy firm but earned much less than N$10 000 per month. He was nevertheless grateful for the opportunity because it provided valuable experience while other graduates remained unemployed. Notably, this is comparable to what young graduates reportedly earned around 15 to 20 years ago, raising questions about why graduate remuneration has not kept pace with inflation.

These examples are not representative of the entire market, but they illustrate the economic pressures facing young professionals attempting to enter the engineering profession.

The cost of underbidding

My hypothesis regarding this situation does not support the ‘saturated industry’ view. Rather, I believe the limited employment opportunities for young graduate engineers are, to some extent, linked to the current procurement system. By awarding tenders primarily to the lowest responsive bidder, the system can incentivise underbidding, with firms submitting unrealistically low fee bids in an effort to secure projects. This can subsequently constrain their ability to deliver work to the required standard.

Consulting engineering is a people-intensive profession in which professional expertise is the primary resource. Developing that expertise requires time and money. A graduate engineer is therefore not simply an additional employee; firms must invest in supervision, mentoring, training, professional registration, software, technical resources, and non-billable learning time before a graduate becomes independently productive.

When consultancy fees are continually compressed, firms are forced to make difficult decisions: reducing project staffing, limiting supervision, delaying recruitment, relying more heavily on experienced personnel, or avoiding the recruitment of graduates altogether.

At one of our EPA meetings, a retired engineer showed me a list he compiled of consultancy fees awarded for several government and municipal projects between 2018 and 2020. According to the information presented, the awarded fees were approximately 20% to 30% of the recommended gazetted fee scale for the respective project values. He argued that this difference creates a conflict between the procurement system and the recommended fee scales under the Namibian Engineering Act, potentially placing consulting engineers under significant financial pressure.

This can create a self-reinforcing cycle: low consultancy fees → reduced project resources → limited capacity for supervision and mentoring → fewer graduate opportunities → weaker professional development → a shrinking pool of experienced engineers.

The issue therefore extends beyond graduate salaries or employment numbers. It concerns the long-term capacity of the engineering profession to develop, retain, and reproduce the expertise required to sustain the industry.

Keeping the pipeline open

If Namibia wants a strong domestic engineering profession in 10 or 20 years, we need to think about the entire pipeline. Universities can produce graduates, but industry must have the capacity to train them. Professional institutions can establish standards, but engineers need opportunities to gain the experience required to meet those standards. Government can allocate budgets for infrastructure, but procurement practices influence whether those budgets create sufficient professional capacity around the projects.

One solution would be to implement a procurement process that does not select the lowest responsive bidder, but rather selects a realistic bid. A fellow EPA council member suggested that Namibia should use the African Development Bank (AfDB) procurement model, which, in broad terms, discards the lowest and highest bid prices (the outliers) and selects the bid closest to the average of the remaining bids. In my opinion, this would be fair and reasonable for the client, for the engineering industry, and, ultimately, for young graduate engineers.

Keeping this pipeline open requires a procurement system that prioritises realistic, sustainable bids over the lowest price. By adopting a more balanced approach to tender evaluation, Namibia can create an environment in which engineering firms have the resources to invest in graduate recruitment, supervision, and professional development. Ultimately, the goal is not simply to create jobs for young engineers but to ensure that they receive the guidance and experience needed to become registered professionals and, in time, the technical leaders on whom the country's future development will depend.

*Prof Gert C. Cloete is an associate professor in civil engineering at the Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST). The opinions expressed in this piece are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of his employer.