Kenyan railway puts female drivers on career fast track

NAIROBI — While growing up in a farming village in northwestern Kenya, Tabitha Kiplimo had to defy entrenched gender stereotypes to prove that career success was not a preserve of her male peers.

The 30-year-old electrical engineering major was recruited by the contractor of the 480-kilometer Mombasa-Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway soon after graduation, where her skills and agility proved to be a valuable asset.

Kiplimo said an internship with China Road and Bridge Corporation, or CRBC, which was constructing the modern railway line, gave her a platform to hone her skills and improve cross-cultural interaction.

Prior to the launch of the Mombasa-Nairobi SGR commuter train service on May 31, 2017, Kiplimo went to China for a two-month course in locomotive operations, marking a milestone in her career growth.

“We trained on critical aspects of operating a locomotive including signaling, the braking system and engine,” she said. “The training has been continuous and we feel adequately skilled to steer the MombasaNairobi SGR passenger train, as its contribution to the country’s economic transformation becomes abundantly clear.”

Kiplimo also said driving the modern passenger train under the supervision of a Chinese instructor since the middle of 2017 has been an exciting experience. She admitted that she had not anticipated that she would one day find herself in an otherwise male-dominated field. She credited her parents, tutors and Chinese instructors for encouraging her to go the distance despite the setbacks.

“It is an inspiration to young girls whom I believe are equal to the task when they grow up,” she said.

Currently promoted to a midlevel managerial position by the SGR operator, Kiplimo said she has been handling more difficult tasks like data analysis in the last two months. She will soon work at the locomotive dispatch office where she will be handling technical tasks, a reaffirmation of her steady career growth since becoming a locomotive driver nearly five years ago.

Ahead of its fifth anniversary, the Mombasa-Nairobi SGR has advanced gender equality in its core operations, said Shallom Waweru, a female locomotive driver in her late 20s.

Waweru majored in education and the Chinese language at a public university. Soon after CRBC recruited her in 2016, she went to China for rigorous training on locomotive operations. “The training in China revolved around theory and practice as it related to operating a locomotive and when we came back in 2017, we joined the newly launched SGR locomotive as drivers,” Waweru said.