Chilufya Mukupa is qraduate of ZAMITA's Heavy Equipment Engineering programme who now works for Kalumbila Minerals, a Zambian subsidiary of Canadian mining company, First Quantum Minerals. Asked what he thought about the statement, "engineering is only for men”, Mukupa replied, "That’s a lie, because in the company that I’m coming from there are female engineers in senior positions. They haven’t got those positions easily. It’s through hard work."
Mukupa continued, "Engineering isn’t for males only. Females can be engineers. And you will find that most of the women doing engineering are doing fine! You can be anything you want to be regardless of your gender in this world. Nowadays, we even have pilots who are female…We have male doctors, we have female doctors… In the past, it used to be a problem, because men said that certain things were just for men. Nowadays, there’s diversity – things are changing. The world is transforming every day.”
In late 2019, UNIDO, the Embassy of Sweden in Zambia, the Volvo Group and the Government of Zambia pledged to continue their support for ZAMITA until 2022 in order to address the skills shortage in the commercial transport sector. At an event to launch the second phase of the ZAMITA project, Marcus Horberg, Vice President of the Volvo Group Southern Africa, said, "It's great to see the teachers and their students here - very inspiring - and extra inspiring to see so many women taking part and wanting to be engineers and mechanics in the future."
At the same event, the United Nations Resident Coordinator in Zambia, Coumba Mar Gadio, said, “We are committed to this task. As we all know, education is a fundamental human right and it is indispensable for the achievement of sustainable development.”
Gadio said that while education needs globally were immense, companies could leverage their resources and core competencies to support governments in delivering on their promise of education for all. “The training of engineers, who are able to innovate, design, create and maintain products, systems and equipment for the benefit and well-being of all peoples, is cardinal,” she added.