Mozambican Odete Muximpua recently became the country’s first woman engineer with a Master’s degree
Odete Muximpua is used to being a trailblazer. Raised in the small coastal city of Quelimane by her mother and grandmother, she is the first person in her family to have gone to college. This year, she also became Mozambique’s first homegrown woman engineer with a Master’s degree.
Women disproportionately lack access to higher education in Mozambique. UNESCO reports that in 2011, the country’s female gross enrolment ratio in tertiary education was just 3.73%. While this situation is mirrored across sub-Saharan African countries, Mozambique especially lags behind when it comes to women’s as well as overall youth enrollment in sciences, technology, engineering and math (STEM) disciplines.
Muximpua graduated her secondary school with outstanding grades. After graduation, she remembers being torn about choosing engineering until the last day to apply for university.
“Here in Mozambique, we have very few girls going into engineering. Most who attend university study social sciences or medicine,” she said.
With encouragement from her school math teacher, Muximpua decided to study civil engineering, and applied to Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo, Mozambique’s oldest and largest university. She topped the national entry exam, and in 2000, became one of just five women in a class of 55 students.
She ended up being the only girl in her class by the time she graduated, the others dropping out or unable to graduate in time.
“The boys respected me a lot,” she said. “I became head of the class, which gave me a lot of power!”
In her third year at university, Muximpua had a choice to study hydraulics or construction, a more popular choice among engineering students. She became the only one in class to specialize in hydraulics.
“I felt that water management was a challenge in my country and worldwide,” Muximpua said. “I understood that it was a scarce resource, and I thought that’s where I could make a difference.”
