Constructing Two Worlds

 Whenever I pass a construction site here in the US. I always wonder how quiet it is compared to construction sites in
Ethiopia where they are always loud and sometimes chaotic. Contractors in Ethiopia use a lot of unskilled manpower to compensate for the lack of machinery or high price to rent or buy them. It is relatively cheaper for them to hire people to work as laborers. The drawback is the laborers they hire are unskilled and are not productive as the contractors want them to be. To perform a simple task there needs to be a lot of commotion and shouting accompanied by whatever noise construction machinery on the site makes.


On the other hand contractors in the US are highly dependent on machinery to minimize cost because unlike Ethiopia hiring people is expensive. The people they hire are highly skilled and much more productive than their Ethiopian counterparts. You will not see a lot of unskilled laborers doing manual tasks in the US instead you will see few high skilled construction workers operating all kinds of machinery. In general, most construction goes as planned and is completed according to plan. Everything is predictable and there is no reason for delay or unproductiveness. 

In Ethiopia, Contractors don't have that luxury everything is unpredictable there will always be something that pops up after planning and during construction. Engineers and whoever works in construction should have an extra set of skills to navigate this unpredictability. They have to come up with solutions for new problems and have to improvise on the spot to complete projects. It is rare for a project to be completed on time which makes it cost more than the budget allocated but almost all projects are completed whatever time they may take. 

When you compare the construction prosses of the two worlds they perfectly reflect the social economies of two worlds. Although it is easy to conclude that the Ethiopian construction method is inefficient and underdeveloped when the bigger picture is seen the sector employs a large section of the uneducated unskilled population of the country giving some economic benefit for millions of families. 

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