Jesca Mhere brings honour to womanhood. While women generally concentrate in what some people may describe as “light jobs”, Jesca likes the rough and tumble. A mechanical engineer, she has been working in the cotton industry for the past 16 years, 14 of which she spent at Cargill at Chegutu.
She is now with Agric Value Chain (AVC), the company which took over Cargill’s sprawling plant at Chegutu when the American global food corporation packed bag and baggage and left Chegutu in 2014 because of operational challenges, including low cotton output, breach of contractual obligations by farmers, and low margins.
Very experienced, Jesca did production engineering (mechanical) at diploma level at the Mutare Polytechnic and finished it at Gweru Polytechnic. A team of Brick by Brick editors visiting the AVC plant in Chegutu in mid-November 2022 encountered her at the company’s new brick factory then under construction 500 metres away from the main plant. She was there as an engineer and supervisor.
Jesca told the editors that she was just there for the installation of the brick factory’s machines. The first semi-automated brick factory in Zimbabwe, it will be producing 50,000 bricks a day, and AVC managers are quite excited about it.
Asked why she chose mechanical engineering, Jesca said: “I just wanted to be different because by the time I did my first year at Mutare Polytechnic, most ladies were doing secretarial courses, so that side was flooded. So I just chose to be different. In fact I wanted to do electrical engineering, but it was also flooded with ladies, so I chose mechanical engineering.”
Generally, engineering is dominated by men the world over, so how are the men treating her? Jesca responded: “I have been working with men for the past 18 years. I am more comfortable with men than with women. At Cargill, we were two ladies, one electrical engineer and myself, a mechanical engineer. But now at AVC, I am the only lady on the engineering side.”
May good luck smile on her as she continues her trailblazing, which should encourage other women to enter the profession.
