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The civil engineering work of GIBB in Africa is
mainly by African professionals, the result of a
long-standing policy of training local engineers
both from government departments and as employees.
Paul Karekezi, managing director of GIBB Eastern
Africa, is a 40 year old Kenyan who first joined
GIBB while studying engineering at Nairobi
University. Three quarters of key staff are
African.
In 1995 GIBB Eastern Africa is training 30
government counterpart staff on a water project for
12 towns in Ethiopia. It sponsors a student at the
Kenya Polytechnic and has several other university
and polytechnic students on attachment. Many
GIBB-trained engineers hold responsible jobs
outside the company.
Sir Alexander Gibb and Partners first set up an
office in Nairobi 50 years ago. It designed and
supervised construction of the Jomo Kenyatta
Airport in Nairobi. At the other end of the scale,
it is concerned with clean water for Gambian and
Mozambican villages.
It has designed a new dairy for a co-operative
of 10,000 Kenyan farmers, enabling them to export
cheese, butter and yoghurt as well as sell them in
and around Nairobi. It has helped other farmers
market their produce through the improvement of
1,000 kilometres of rural roads. The improvement
was done by people, rather than machines.
For 200,000 square kilometres of Mozambique, it
has designed a system for lining wells and for
supplying and maintaining handpumps. The handpump
project involves setting up village maintenance
committees, training villagers to maintain the
pumps, and supplying spare parts. Some of the
poorest rural communities in the world will have
clean,instead of mud-clogged, water for the first
time.
GIBB has a reputation for integrity which has
won it a groundswell of support from client
organisations throughout Eastern Africa.
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