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Namdeb and Debmarine engage girls in engineering


“I SEE myself as a good engineer. I want to work at a diamond mine to make my country rich. I do not want Namibia to be so dependent on other countries,” says Percy Bekele (17).

Bekele attends JA Nel Senior Secondary School at Keetmanshoop and aims for a career in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields, where women represent less than 20% of all engineering professionals in Africa.

She was one of a group of girls who attended the Debmarine-Namdeb Foundation’s engagement for women in engineering at Keetmanshoop on Saturday.

“My father is an engineer. Having accompanied him to work and seeing the environment he worked in attracted me to the field. I want to operate big machines,” she said at the event.

Also at the event were women engineers employed by Namdeb and Debmarine.

The Demarine-Namdeb Foundation, in partnership with WomEng, engaged 250 girls from high schools at Keetmanshoop in the //Kharas region to expose them to future careers in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

The chairperson of the Debmarine-Namdeb Foundation, Brent Eiseb, at the event said these engagements aim to enlighten girls and enable them to make informed decisions in choosing careers in the involved fields rather than avoiding them.

“We would like to see more women joining the industry and taking up positions in previously male-dominated fields,” he said.

The world has changed a lot in the past 30 to 40 years, and the future is moving more into a world of innovation, smart technology, and artificial intelligence, the deputy director of education for the //Kharas region, Jasmine Magermann, said.

“I come from a world where we called the post office to dial a number for you, now we have cellphones . . . a world where the television took up half your living room, but now you have flat-screen TVs . . . and a world where black girls could become engineers was unheard of, but you have this opportunity.”





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