April-May 2002 - Volume 1, Issue 3

"Actively Engaged in the Development of ICT in Ethiopia"

Dr. Mohamed Abdo, graduated from the AAU with B.Sc. Degree in Electrical Engineering in 1980. After a brief period of teaching in the Electrical Department of the University, he was sent to Italy for a postgraduate study and earned his M.Sc. in Electronics Engineering from the Polytechnic of Turin in 1986. He served as a Lecturer in the Department until he won a scholarship to the then West Germany and obtained his Ph. D. in Microwave Engineering from the University of Duisburg in 1994. He secured a teaching job after his return; and is now serving as Head of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the AAU.

Dr. Mohammed Abdo, Head of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, elaborated past achievements, future plans and prospects for the development of Computer Engineering Education within his Department in general and the Computer Engineering Stream in particular.

ICT Focus: How could we evaluate the progress of the Department in ICT education?
Dr. Mohammed: The Department is proud for having produced almost all the electrical, electronic and computer engineers that have been able to play important roles in the economic development of the country. The Department has been offering computer related courses such as communication and computer hardware and software in order to enable them cope with the ever increasing sophistication of the information technology in their field of specialization as electrical engineers. In view of the growing demand, the Department started a programme to graduate young professionals with B.Sc. degrees specializing in the field of Computer Engineering.

ICT Focus: What is the intake for the B.Sc. Programme in Computer Engineering?
Dr. Mohammed: In the first place, the maximum number of students that are admitted to the Department does not surpass the level of 55 per year. On the other hand, the students of the Department have to go through various stages of learning in the major disciplines such as communication, power, computing, including hardware and software, to balance the mix of knowledge before they specialize in the field of computer Engineering proper. Therefore, the number of graduates in computer science has been limited to an average of 20 during the last four years of the inception of the programme.

ICT Focus: Can you tell us something about the teaching processes in the Computer Engineering stream?
Dr. Mohammed: As I said, the students of the Department take ICT related courses through stages before they finally join their respective streams chosen for specialization. For instance, all students specializing in Computer Science take Introduction to Computing and Computational Methods in their 3rd year, Logic Design and Computer Architecture in 4th year while Introduction to Microprocessors and Interfacing will be given as additional courses in their final year of study. The Computer Engineering students, will then take additional 12 credit hour courses in their area of Computing.

ICT Focus: Do you have the necessary teaching staff to run the programme in full?
Dr. Mohammed: The Department presently has 20 qualified academic staff including two expatriate members with many years of teaching and research experience to undertake the teaching process of advanced courses in the field of ICT and others in order to meet the requirements of Government, business and industry. It has been able to graduate more than 60 students during the past four years. We feel that this is not still enough and we are in the process of increasing our intake provided we can set additional staff and facilities.

ICT Focus: Do you have adequate facilities, such as PCs, to ably conduct the courses?
Dr. Mohammed: The Department has adequate facilities to properly conduct the teaching processes for the current intake of its undergraduate and postgraduate studies in Computer Engineering. There are more than 62 networked computers loaded with various operating systems in its computing laboratories and the Faculty's Computer Centre. Out of these PCs, 11 are utilized as Servers. In addition, the offices of the main departments have also been networked to facilitate the communication of timely information.

ICT Focus: Can you say that you have satisfied the labour market?
Dr. Mohammed: The demand for our graduates is still very high and we could not satisfy the demands coming from the government, NGO and the private sector for our graduates in computer Engineering. In fact, our students are booked by some institutions in advance of their graduation. For example, the graduates in 1999 were mostly recruited by a few NGOs and the private business. There were also some who opened and run their own successful ICT businesses. The graduates in 2000 joined private ICT companies such as High Tech Pack, Concept Data System and Cyber Soft immediately upon graduation and have been able to impart their skills to the success of these companies in their ICT ventures.

ICT Focus: What are your future plans?
Dr. Mohammed: As I said, the demand for computer engineering graduates of the Department is very high, and we have not so far met the ever growing demands coming from prospective employers both in the civil service and the private business. We have, therefore, planned to raise our yearly intake from the present level to 30 per year in the immediate future. The construction of the building will start soon and additional facilities to
successful implementation of the project. It was one of the four African countries selected for a grant of fund from the Australian Government to launch a programme of distance education. Four Australian universities were involved in the selection of prospective universities from the four African universities - among which the Addis Ababa University was one. The happy result was that all the participating universities from Australia in the selection process for the launching of the distance learning programme chose the Addis Ababa University. If one of the Australian universities won the fund, the Addis Ababa University would definitely be launching the distance learning programme. The University Management can give you more information on this issue than what I can tell you now.

ICT Focus: What is your view of the development of the information and communication technology in Ethiopia?
Dr. Mohammed: The 'information' can be anything but the 'communication' can only be "electrical engineering communication." Moreover, the 'technology' is within 'engineering.' This means that ICT is the natural outgrowth of the electrical engineering discipline. Electrical engineering includes such disciplines as Electric Power Engineering, Control Engineering, Electronics, Instrumentation Engineering, Communication Engineering, Computer Engineering, etc. Hence, the last two disciplines, i.e., Communication Engineering and Computer Engineering naturally make up the science of ICT. Therefore, Electrical Engineering does not only play a key role in the development of ICT, but we can neither perceive Electrical Engineering in isolation from ICT nor can ICT grow without it as its base. That is why the specialization in computer engineering in the Department starts at the 4th year after students eligible for the stream have taken relevant courses. Computer engineering is either the domain of the Electrical Engineering Department or a specialized entity in almost all universities in Europe and America. Otherwise, as there is no Technology Faculty without Electrical Engineering, there can be no Computer Engineering without Electrical Engineering and Electrical Engineering without Computer Engineering. I can say that, in Ethiopia too, electrical engineers immediately filled the gap for the demand of ICT professionals at the beginning of the introduction of computers into Ethiopia. In this regard, the Department is planning to hold a symposium in mid June with the theme "The Role of Electrical and Computer Engineering for ICT Development in Ethiopia"