Botswana Institution of Engineers 16th International Biennial Conference 2019
Botswana Institution of Engineers is one of the oldest Associations locally being started by 27 graduate engineers in 1984. BIE has about 1500 members to date. The Association hosted its 16th International Biennial Conference 2019 at Grand Aria this November. The President of BIE, Engineer Oliver Balebeng welcomed the delegates to the convention. The theme was held under the theme ‘In pursuit Of Millennium Development Goals beyond 2015: Sustainable Knowledge –based Economies through Engineering and Applied sciences’. University Of Botswana, SAFEO-Southern African Federation Of Engineering Organisations and Botho University co-hosted the event.
The President explained that this this theme demonstrated Botswana’s consistence to strive towards developing the national engineering human capital to align with the international world in order to achieve the SDGs through building internal engineering capacity to achieve the national vision 2036 pillar of Sustainable Economic Development.
The conference delivered research based knowledge directly aligned to the following SDGs, quality education, clean water and sanitation, industry innovation and infrastructure, sustainable cities and communities and climate action.
“Engineers in Botswana are fully capacitated to be major contributors to Botswana’s economy, governance and professionalism including their ability to network with the local and international Engineering community”, he said.
The Conference Committee Chairman Professor Rapelang Marumo also concurred with the President and added that, “knowledge creation and the application of knowledge has become central to economic growth. Knowledge, no longer resources is the major source of wealth around the world today. This realisation is now driving Botswana to make major changes to its education system in order to begin to produce a new workforce which will create new knowledge. Any country which seeks to become part of the globalised knowledge economy has to produce a new generation of knowledge workers.”
