ISSMGE AFRICA REGION “THE PAST”
Dr Peter Day (South Africa)
assisted by Dr Mustafa El-Ghamrawy (Egypt) and Prof Mounir Bousida (Tunisia)
GOING WAY BACK
A 42cm x 2,8m papyrus scroll discovered around 1820 near ancient Thebes in Egypt, and now in the Egyptian Museum in Turin, is purported to be the world‟s oldest surviving geological map. It depicts the topography and geology of Wadi Hammamat in the mountains of the central Eastern Desert of Egypt, including the aerial distribution of sedimentary and igneous/metamorphic rocks. It also shows the gold workings at Bir Umm Fawakhir, the gold-bearing quartz veins on the adjacent mountains and the lithologically diverse wadi gravels. This map, which was drawn during the reign of Ramesses IV (1151 –1145 BC) pre-dates the next oldest known geological map by some 29 centuries [1]. Remaining in Egypt, various accounts of the construction of the Giza pyramids refer to the use of massive earth ramps for hauling great blocks of stone to incredible height.
It is therefore clear that Africa‟s interest in things geological and geotechnical dates back to ancient times.
At the other end of the African Continent, the first comprehensive geological map of South Africa was published by the Geological Society of London in 1856. It was compiled by the Scottish-born pioneer of the Cape mountain passes, Sir Andrew Geddes Bain. He and his son, Thomas, constructed no less than 32 major passes in the Cape Province of South Africa during the 19th Century [2].
Throughout Africa, as in the rest of the world, practical knowledge of the behaviour of soils developed in response to the practical needs of the communities, including irrigation canals, river crossings, roads, mountain passes and building materials. Worldwide, scientific interest in the subject goes as far back as 1776 when Coulomb published an essay on the application of the rules of maxima minima to settle problems of stability related to architecture which was the beginning of our modern understanding of earth pressures on retaining structures. Almost a century later in 1857, Rankine explored the same topic when he wrote on the stability of loose earth. The first failure criteria for soils was developed in 1882 by Christian Mohr, a German civil engineer and in 1885, the French mathematician and physicist, Joseph Boussinesq, proposed equations for determining the stress distribution within an elastic solid which is still used today for predicting settlement of soils.
Throughout the world, as in Africa, soil mechanics developed as much as an art as a science. The publication by Karl Terzaghi of Erdbaumechanik in 1925 heralded the dawn of modern soil mechanics by recognising the multiphase nature of soil, culminating in the publication of the theory of reflective stress in 1936.
AFRICA JOINS THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY
The International Society of Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering was founded at the first International Conference of the Society in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1936. Africa was represented by two of its senior geotechnical statesmen, Professor William Selim Hanna of Egypt and Jeremiah Jennings from South Africa. Hanna presented a paper on his research into Egyptian soils and also a report on studies carried out in the soil mechanics laboratory of the Faculty of Engineering at Cairo University, which was established in 1933. At the time, Jennings was studying soil mechanics at MIT under Terzaghi. He returned to South Africa to head up the National Building Research Institute and later became a distinguished professor of soil mechanics at the University of the Witwatersrand.
It is understood that Egypt was the first African member to join the International Society of Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering, as it was then known. South Africa followed in 1948 when the Division of Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering of the South African Institution of Civil Engineers was formed at the 2nd International Conference in Rotterdam.
In the years that followed, a further nine African Member Societies were added including Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Sudan, Tunisia and Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia), Morocco and Mozambique. Sadly the membership of two of these members has since lapsed and only nine societies remain in the African region.
The membership of the International Society comprises member societies from various countries around the world which are grouped into six regions. The various member societies declare their individual membership numbers to the International Society on an annual basis and these numbers are used in the determination of the fees payable to the ISSMGE by the member society. In terms of the number of individual members, the South African member society has always been the largest society in the Africa region, having more individual members than the rest of Africa combined. However, these figures have been distorted by the approaches adopted by the various member societies in registering their individual membership with the ISSMGE. In South Africa, the practice has always been to enrol all individual members of the Geotechnical Division as individual members of the ISSMGE. On the other hand, some member societies elected only to register their senior members, probably in an attempt to reduce the fees payable to the International Society.
In order to encourage member societies to register their full individual membership with the International Society, the ISSMGE scale of fees was revised by resolution of Council in 2005. The new fee scale, although based entirely on a per capita fee, depends on the purchasing power parity of the member country. This was coupled with an obligation to pay for a minimum of thirty individual members per society and rewards for societies with more than 250 individual members. As a result, the individual membership of certain African societies has increased dramatically with Egypt now being the second biggest member society in the region.
COLONIAL INFLUENCES
The majority of the countries in the Africa region started off as colonies of European powers including the United Kingdom, France, Portugal, Belgium and The Netherlands. Inevitably, this has had an effect on the way in which soil mechanics is practiced within the various countries. Even in countries such as Egypt where there was no such colonial power, the practice of soil mechanics has been influenced by the universities attended by senior academics and practitioners, many of these situated abroad.
One of the most immediate influences is the effect of language. It is perfectly natural for the French- speaking countries of northern and western Africa to adopt methods of investigation and design originating from France, for the Portuguese-speaking countries of southern Africa to look to Portugal and Brazil for technical input and for English-speaking countries to be influenced by British practice and standards. Perhaps the most striking example of this colonial influence is the formation, under French patronage, of the Trans-National Committee of African Geotechnical Engineers in 1996.
Le Comité Transnational des Géotechniciens d’Afrique, or CTGA consists of geotechnical engineers from French-speaking African countries where there is no national representation on the International Society. In many of these countries, technical co-operation with France is further strengthened by collaboration at many levels including universities, testing laboratories, government departments and consulting organisations. A brief contribution on the history of the CTGA is appended to this report. >> Read more
