The African Academy of Engineering (AAE) is a continental academy for engineering professionals. It operates under the guidance of the United Nations Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD), World Innovation Development Cooperation Organization and is registered at Kenya National Authority, filed with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and the African Union (AU). Our work brings engineers together and connects engineering practice, engineering education and industry resources, so that independent and professional advice is available on the engineering challenges facing African countries in infrastructure, energy, water, agriculture, digital technologies and manufacturing.
AAE currently brings together more than 300 Fellows from over 40 African and other countries. They are drawn from universities, research institutes, engineering design organizations and industry, and cover the main engineering disciplines: civil, mechanical, electrical, electronic and information engineering, chemical engineering, mining, maritime engineering, agricultural engineering and environmental engineering.
Our principal work includes advancing engineering education reform, supporting engineering research that addresses real problems, organizing dialogue between engineers and decision-makers, building channels to the international engineering community and industry, and recognizing, through awards and programme, outstanding engineers and engineering outcomes across the continent.
AAE is not a policy-making body and does not replace the role of national governments or professional engineering institutions. Its value lies in organizing the engineering experience and expertise scattered across African countries into a body of professional judgement that governments, industry and universities can use.
Our Mission
- Bring together outstanding engineers from Africa and the diaspora into a cross-border, cross-disciplinary professional community.
- Provide independent, practical and implementable professional advice on the engineering challenges of African development.
- Raise the quality of engineering education and vocational skills training, and prepare engineers who can solve local problems.
- Connect African engineering with international academies, industry and professional bodies, on the basis of equal and mutual cooperation.
Our Vision
An Africa whose engineers lead the solution of Africa’s engineering problems.
We see an Africa in which the continent’s infrastructure, energy, water, agriculture, industry and health systems are designed, built and maintained by African engineers, working to global standards and rooted in local conditions. AAE exists so that the engineering expertise needed for Africa’s transformation is no longer imported at the point of delivery, but grown on the continent itself.
We aspire to be:
- The trusted voice of African engineering — independent, evidence-based, and listened to by governments, industry and international institutions.
- A home for the continent’s best engineers — across 40-plus countries, across disciplines, and across academic, industrial and vocational practice.
- A bridge between African engineering and the world — on equal terms, in both directions, in service of Africa’s priorities rather than someone else’s agenda.
- A builder of the engineering pipeline — from STEM in schools to vocational technical training to postgraduate research, so that the next generation of African engineers can solve the problems their parents’ generation could not.
Our vision is not to become the largest engineering academy in the world. It is to become the one that matters to Africa’s development — the place a minister calls when a dam, a power grid or a manufacturing policy is on the table; the place a company comes when it needs an engineer it can trust; and the place a young African student points to and says, “that is where engineers like me are made.”