Engineering Strategies and Industrial Processing Capacity for Poverty Alleviation in Nigeria

The paper attempts to identify, discuss and proffer solution to some of the engineering activities that might have contributed to the poverty problem. Engineering profession’s willingness to find some meaningful solutions to the nation’s poverty problem is understandable and laudable. The nature of businesses including public enterprises are increasingly technical and engineering profession is usually involved in their development and maintenance. These enterprises have a remarkable capacity to absorb labour and hence are fruitful sources of jobs and income. The dismay performance of them in recent times is undoubtedly a contributing factor to the current poverty problem in Nigeria. In this paper, it was observed that past approaches to poverty alleviation such as free education, adult education, rural electrification, operation feed the nation, etc has an impact, but they were not successful. In order for engineering to effectively contribute to poverty alleviation, the country does require long-term engineering solution through technological innovation, manufacturing sector, manufacturing Value Added and activities of Engineering professional bodies. Proposal are presented to enhance engineering vision through industries capacity for improve quality of life for the increasing population to survive the competitive international economy.