Malawi bridge build - a first hand account from the field of engineering in action

This summer, Jumana Al-Zubaidi and Harriet Kirk spent five weeks in Malawi working on a number of footbridge projects with government departments and NGOs. They share their experiences and explain how the small difference they made mattered. 

Jumana Al-Zubaidi and Harriet Kirk
16 October 2015

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We first decided to go on an expedition to Malawi late in 2014, when we heard that a footbridge we had built on a previous trip in 2007 had been damaged and vandalised.

We were involved in that first project as undergraduate students at Imperial College London. A community in the very rural northern tip of the Nyika National Park that was split in two during the rainy season each year as the North Rukuru river passed through the village of Uledi, and swelled into an impassable torrent each summer. Residents couldn’t reach facilities such as schools, healthcare and markets. It also meant that the National Park was unable to send scouts into the park to monitor illegal poaching.

"Development work benefits from the involvement of stakeholders throughout, and this includes government and communities. This becomes difficult when the community is deeply mistrustful of the government."

So in 2007 our team developed a design, fund-raised, organised logistics and travelled out to Malawi to construct a suspended footbridge using manual power and mostly local materials. 

It was a vital piece of infrastructure. So when we heard that damage to the bridge rendered it unusable we had to find out more.

It turned out that the handrail cables had been cut by vandals and removed. The community was suffering again from the severance, which was hitting them economically and socially and there was a clear need for the bridge to be repaired. The National Park was again unable to prevent poaching.

On discussion with the National Park we agreed to travel out to Malawi to repair the bridge. But to justify the costs of such an expedition, we contacted other NGOs in the country and arranged to visit other communities where a we felt a similar footbridge could possibly improve harsh living conditions. 

Malawi in 2015 is a very different country to Malawi in 2007. We weren’t prepared for the scale of the change, for better and for worse. There is an ongoing international investigation into ‘Cashgate’, a scandal in which millions of dollars in international aid funding are claimed to have been stolen by government employees.

"In 2007 we had hired a completely male workforce, and had assumed the same for this summer. It was the local people who suggested we have an equal opportunity workforce, which was a welcome surprise and shows some progress in attitudes to female work."

Amongst many of the Malawians we spoke to, we encountered a bitter acceptance that this is their status quo, and a distrust of national and local government to care about citizens and to follow through on promises.

Development work benefits from the involvement of stakeholders throughout, and this includes government and communities. This becomes difficult when the community is deeply mistrustful of the government.

Yet of the changes that have improved life in Malawi, the most noticeable were attributable to the rise of telecommunications. Nearly everywhere in the country, you can make a call or surf the internet. Some may argue that electricity should be a higher priority when only 10% of the population has access and the high cost of tariffs compared to average earnings introduce new problems. However, better and faster communication reduces some of the problems of rural living. 

We spent two weeks carrying out an inspection and repairs on the Uledi bridge. As at the time of the original construction, no electricity or specialist equipment was available and all work was carried out by man-power alone. We hired a local workforce of about 25 men and women, mostly unskilled.

In 2007 we had hired a completely male workforce, and had assumed the same for this summer. It was the local people who suggested we have an equal opportunity workforce, which was a welcome surprise and shows some progress in attitudes to female work.

There are many challenges associated with working in Malawi, the least of which is the technical engineering. The business culture is much more laid back, and punctuality, reliability and accuracy are not as well-practiced as British engineers might expect.

The Cashgate scandal provides the backdrop to public spending and there is a deep distrust of officials, while at the same time a history of charity and aid has led to an expectation that development will be free and a reluctance to contribute financially. We encountered this attitude particularly from government officials, while ordinary people and Traditional Authorities would often be prepared to contribute despite their obvious poverty.  

For the second part of our trip we worked with an NGO in Blantyre. In Blantyre we visited three communities, in an informal settlement on the outskirts of the city. The focus of our time spent in these communities was on collecting information from as many community members as possible.

"We are always on the look out for other engineers interested in being involved in a challenging project in a beautiful country!"

The people there are richer, but in many ways live in less appealing conditions. The communities are densely packed, and each rainy season, deep gullies running through the built up areas flood and divide the communities. The simple timber bridges that the communities have built themselves are either washed away each year or are no longer usable as the gully banks are heavily eroded.

It was clear that although a new bridge could increase the lifespan of a crossing by a few years, the main problem in these communities is poor water management.

Footpaths and houses are being undercut by flooded gullies, which each year are getting wider and deeper. Our advice to the community was to focus any funds and effort on solving the flooding at its root cause, by working with town planners and hydraulic engineers. We are approaching individuals and NGOs in the UK who specialise in these areas with an aim to working with them to help the communities. 

The final part of our journey took us to Linthipe, near Lilongwe, where we had been communicating with an independent charity worker living there. Here we heard from the community that a major river floods each rainy season, cutting off thousands of people from education, healthcare, markets, and vocational training centres.

People are forced to take a route miles longer to reach these facilities, despite this detour being known for high levels of violent crime, especially targeted towards women. Our site survey revealed that a crossing would have to be more thatn 50m and is technically challenging in terms of placing foundations.

Now back in the UK it is clear the work is not complete. We are continuing our feasibility study work - and of course always on the look out for other engineers interested in being involved in a challenging project in a beautiful country!

Jumana Al-Zubaidi is a bridge engineer with Mott MacDonald based in Croydon. Harriet Kirk is a geotechnical engineer with Atkins based in Leeds.