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From Rwanda with love
Published: November 15, 2007
Mark O’Kane is a former globe-trotting Electrolux employee who left to follow his dream of working in Africa. Now Director of a technical college in a small Rwandan village, O'Kane talks with E-Gate about his Electrolux career, travel adventures and his experiences working in Rwanda.
Electrolux seeks employees that hold the same values as the company. O'Kane is no exception. His thoughtfulness brought him to Africa where he works 100 hour weeks to help provide technical education to 380 boarding students.

A global career

O'Kane's career at Electrolux began when he applied for a job at a manufacturing plant in Orange, Australia because he had never seen snow before and had heard it snowed in Orange. He gained a position as Product Design Engineer which he held from 1987 to 1990.

"It was a steep learning curve as the department had very experienced engineers who were eager to transfer their knowledge. I thoroughly enjoyed this time,” says O'Kane.

O'Kane eft the Orange plant to travel overseas and work with Electrolux in Sweden where he got to see even more snow. From September 1991 to August 1992, O'Kane worked at the Electrolux refrigeration factory at Mariestad, Sweden. After extensive travel with Electrolux through Europe, the USA and Japan, he returned to Australia to work at Orange plant from April 1993 until June 2004. O'Kane was a Senior Engineer on two major projects; the integration of the Kelvinator brand into the Orange plant and Ophir.
In pursuit of a dream

Bringing his thoughtfulness to Africa

In June 2004, O’Kane resigned from Electrolux to pursue a lifelong dream of providing aid to Africa. “I didn’t tell anyone of my plans until 2003, but I began working hard from the late 1990s to build the bank balance because I knew aid workers were not well paid and shouldn’t be a burden on the country that hosts them,” says O’Kane.

Friends and family were shocked that O’Kane would make such a radical decision to go to a country – without a job and with limited contacts – which had only recently emerged from such a tragic event as the 1994 genocide.

“The country was in desperate need of assistance after the horrors of genocide where tens of thousands were massacred and the country’s infrastructure destroyed,” says O’Kane. He was prepared to be a volunteer and decided that in order to be fully committed to his new life he would sell his house and small farm in Australia.

Within an hour of landing at the airport, O’Kane visited the Minister of Education’s office and was offered a job, which he began the following day at the Government technical school ETO Gitarama in central Rwanda.

O’Kane is now the Director of the school, and lives in a house on school grounds in the small village of Gitarama, one and a half hours drive from the capital city of Kigali. He receives a wage from the government, much of which he spends on malaria treatment for ill students and on a young orphan boy he has adopted.

The ETO Gitarama school, which will shortly be renamed Nyanza College of Technology, provides secondary technical education and a higher education Diploma to 380 boarding students. Australian donors, notably the Electrolux refrigeration plant at Orange, provide slightly more funds than the Ministry of Education, which match funds raised from school fees. There is also a sizeable contribution from corporate donors.

Despite the school having some of the best facilities and equipment in the country when it opened in November 2002, its workshops and laboratories were initially locked up, with no money available to provide for electricity, consumables and maintenance. “The funding from Australia and Orange plant has made all the difference and all the workshops and laboratories are now open and operational,” says O’Kane.

O’Kane typically works fourteen hour days, seven days a week, allowing himself a sleep-in on Sunday mornings. The school has a goal of being in the top 20 Rwandan schools, as determined from the 2007 National Examination results. O’Kane is working hard to lift the quality of education so that graduates have the relevant skills to gain employment and is helping develop a 5 year strategic plan for school courses, facilities, and students.

“Working for Electrolux in Sweden really gave me the travel bug and stirred my imagination,” says O’Kane. “It is amazing that the skills I learnt from Electrolux have helped enormously in running this school.“