What did you want to be when you were 15 years old? A policeman? A vet? A builder? For Nigerian-born Hope Emmanuel Frank, it was an engineer. Thanks to the help of Mantrac Nigeria, he’s well on his way to reaching his life goal.

Hope Emmanual is already an inventor. Despite his challenging  circumstances, he spends his time building his very own ‘Cat Hope’ excavators and tipper diggers using wood, syringes, old laptop batteries and various toy parts – something he says surprises and excites people.

After his story was picked up by BBC News Africa in 2019, Mantrac Nigeria saw an opportunity to help Hope Emmanuel reach his dreams and adopted him as a Mantrac ambassador.

The team travelled to Uyo, Akwa Ibom state in Nigeria to find Hope Emmanuel, and invited him and his co-inventor friend, to travel to Mantrac Nigeria headquarters in Oregun, Lagos.

Mantrac Nigeria managing director, Ahmed Ragab, took the budding engineer on a tour of the facilities, visiting our state-of-the-art workshop and getting up close and personal with some of our best-selling Caterpillar equipment – and even operating a next generation Cat 320 excavator!

At Mantrac, we recognise the affinity between education and development, and decided to help improve Hope Emmanuel’s quality of education by awarding him a scholarship to a quality  high school in the state, Topfaith International Secondary School.

We also provided him with a welfare and financial package to take care of his basic needs as a student. With this and a new laptop provided to help encourage his development, we hope to help him realise his lifelong goal of becoming a top engineer.

Now, two years on, Hope Emmanuel is working hard to learn more about engineering, Mantrac and Caterpillar equipment.

His development so far is testament to his level of dedication regardless of his location or socio-economic situation.

As a company, we have a social responsibility to help nurture talent. That’s why we’re committed to continuing to help Hope Emmanual and other youngsters with a spark of ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit and mindset to work hard and pursue their dreams – whatever they may be.