A Ghanaian IT professional, Sesinam Dagadu has been shortlisted for the prestigious Africa Engineering Innovation award.
He is in the list with 14 other innovators from Africa.
CodeRed is a logistics app which significantly reduces emergency response time through a custom-made mapping system for urban areas that don’t have formal addresses.
Using software originally written to help deliver parcels faster, the life-saving CodeRed software now helps ambulances navigate dense urban areas to get to Ghanaians faster.
While affluent areas have well-established street names and postal addressing systems, informal settlements are far more challenging for emergency services to navigate. The software divides regions by simple codes using numbers and letters, and maps out areas to make them easier to navigate.
Dagadu’s team was identified following the 2015 Ebola outbreak to help manage future disasters, and CodeRed is now used in 14 ambulance stations covering 4.2 million Ghanaians in Accra, the capital city.
There are 132 ambulance stations in total, and the team plan to grow CodeRed beyond their home country.
CodeRed is aimed at helping the Ghana National Ambulance Service to meet the World Health Organisation standard of an eight minute reaction time, even when telecommunications are unavailable.
Because the software is not reliant on national infrastructure and is incredibly simple to use, it will be available during crises, natural disasters and disease outbreaks.
Below is the profile of other innovators in the list:
Safe Travel is a mobile software system designed to monitor the speed, location and number of passengers in a bus, and alert both the driver and authorities to potential dangers.
When a bus that is being tracked by Safe Travel’s Travelr app, any speeding or reckless driving is immediately recorded. The app sends the speed at which the bus is travelling, its location, the name of the driver and the bus number to the Safe Travel team, who evaluate it. If the data shows cause for concern, road safety authorities are immediately contacted.
If an accident does occur, the app also immediately notifies the families of victims, road safety teams and nearby hospitals.
In the Central African Economic and Monetary community, road accidents account for more annual deaths than Malaria and AIDS combined, according to the World Bank. Safe Travel is designed to help prevent these by equipping drivers and authorities with more comprehensive and up-to-date data.
Travelr, the android application that tracks driver behaviour, is already freely available on the Google Play store. An iOS version is under development, and revenue is generated by selling the data collected to insurance agencies and road authorities. Safe Travel already has significant interest from the NGO and private sector in Cameroon.
Using solar power for charging stations, Alex Makalliwa plans to revolutionise the Tuk-Tuk industry in Kenya.
Tuk-Tuks are a popular means of transport in Africa’s urban cities, but run on two-stroke engines which are noisy and harmful to the environment. Makalliwa hopes to change this, and support the new fleet of electric Tuk-Tuks with a network of solar-powered, off-grid charging stations to overcome poor grid connectivity in many African cities.
His innovation could save drivers 50% of their current daily motoring costs, which would amount to savings of 11 million Kenyan shillings (US$ 108,507 or GBP 86,882) every week for the current Kenyan Tuk-Tuk industry
Makalliwa’s company, Kuza Automotive Limited, is currently importing components for the electric drive shafts, but the ultimate goal is 100% local production. The charging stations are set to be completely electric to support the effort to reduce COemissions.
Once the core Tuk-Tuk business has been built, Alex hopes to start a Formula E team to promote the business further. For now, the business will be built on Tuk-Tuk conversions and sales, and the network of charging stations.
South Africa based Mozambican hydrology PhD student, Aline Okello, has designed an application to help users set up rainwater harvesting systems tailored to their area and rainfall patterns.
Through the app, the public can calculate how much water they could harvest and which kind of equipment to use based on what type of roof they have on their home, their geographical location and the available tank types in their area. Customers are linked directly to suppliers in their area, and have access to highly accurate rain forecasts.
Okello’s application will allow users to buy the best rainwater harvesting system for their homes straight from the app, and request delivery. Suppliers can advertise on the app, and research institutions can use the software to access accurate rain forecasts.
The ultimate goal is to run the app in countries across Africa, Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region.
Former rocket scientist Andre Nel has shifted his attention to solving electricity supply and carbon emission problems.
His solution to the high energy usage and carbon footprints of household geysers is GreenTower, a solar-powered micro-grid and geyser system. The patent-pending GreenTower geyser uses 90% less energy than a standard geyser, making it possible to run it with solar power.
Water is heated directly by the sun in a series of thermal black pipes and low pressure storage tanks. Once the water is hot it is pressurised using the electrical energy generated by the photovoltaic solar panels. The water is kept hot overnight using the same electrical energy.
Any excess electricity is fed back into the grid to avoid wastage, or used to power LED lights and essential household appliances. Owners can monitor the hybrid system’s performance and energy consumption remotely, online.
The GreenTower system is designed as a large scale solution to energy challenges. A single unit, packaged in recycled shipping containers that have been insulated, can service 15 homes and reduce the electricity demand from a community by 65%, considerably easing pressure on the national power grid.
Usalama is an android mobile phone app that boosts the effectiveness of Kenya’s community policing and speeds up the reaction time of emergency services.
In an emergency, a user can alert the police, medical or fire authorities and every other Usalama user within 200 metres by simply shaking their android phone three times. It also works by holding down the volume button for six seconds, or tapping the emergency icon.
The user can choose a description of the circumstances to send to emergency services and an updated emergency location is sent every five minutes. Emergency services will be able to see which of their agents reacted to distress calls and which calls have not yet been attended to. Data about hot spots for different types of emergencies is also made available to emergency service personnel.
An added ‘walk-with-me’ feature enables users to follow each other’s walk home until they are safe, without physically being there.
The application will be free to the public and come at a cost to emergency service providers.
Fredrick Ouko is a social entrepreneur who recognises that the disabled community represents a large, untapped human resource. Ouko’s innovation, Riziki Source, is an online tool that uses digital technology to overcome the barriers that people with disabilities face in finding employment.
The web and text message-based platform connects people with disabilities to jobs and employers. A simple text message with their location, disability and expertise lists potential employees on a database. Employers are able to browse this database and set up interviews with candidates, and recruits only pay for the service once they are employed.
Currently launched in Kenya and supported by the government’s Department of Labour, Riziki Source already has 300 subscribers.
Kenya reportedly has roughly six million people living in the country with disabilities, often in rural areas. In a digital age, access to workplaces should be less of an obstacle for people with disabilities than in the past, with many people able to work remotely despite physical challenges.
Riziki Source will also offer training on how to successfully incorporate disabled people into working environments to potential employers who do want a physical presence from their recruits.
UN statistics say that Africa has 80 million people living with disabilities, and the World Health Organisation reports 785 million globally. As many as 70 to 80% of disabled people are unemployed.
Ouko and his team aim to upscale their innovation to reduce the extreme poverty often associated with living with a disability.
Tuteria helps students match to a skilled tutor in their area, making it easier to improve their education. Designed by Nigerian systems engineer Godwin Benson, the web based platform already has 6,500 approved tutors, and about 1,250 students are using the platform to find experts.
Learners range from university students up to the age of 28 right down to those at the start of their education, with users as young as four years old registered by their parents to find tutors.
Both tutors and learners are thoroughly vetted to ensure a high quality learning experience, and subjects range from Maths and Science to piano and language instruction. Learners book and pay for lessons online, and tutors are paid once the lessons have been confirmed as delivered.
Benson, a tutor himself for nearly a decade, aims to grow Tuteria beyond Nigeria to become Africa’s most reliable source of educational support for all ages.
The Yaaka Digital Learning Network, an online platform paired with a physical device, is a digital environment where teachers and students can share academic knowledge and materials. It allows skilled teachers to tutor remotely and earn extra income, and helps its users benefit from each other’s experience and guidance.
Ugandan innovator Hindu Nabulumba designed The Yaaka Digital Learning Network and tablet to help people who are eager to learn but can’t physically go to learning institutions.
The online platform, designed like an interactive social network, allows students and teachers to share academic materials and knowledge. The tablet makes these resources available offline.
The Yaaka Network is a forum, an academic resource, a job listing, a tutoring aid and a peer to peer sharing platform all in one.
The SolarTurtle is a mobile power station that provides instant electrification wherever it’s needed, no matter how remote.
Housed in a shipping container, the solar panels are folded out easily, and charge batteries inside recycled bottles. Users take a bottle home and plug it into their home system, and then simply exchange it at the SolarTurtle when it’s depleted, for a small fee.
Electrical engineer James van der Walt designed the SolarTurtle to electrify rural schools. Since then the project has grown to become a multipurpose, theft-proof utility.
The SolarTurtle is aimed at the 585 million sub-Saharan Africans who don’t have electricity, and the security of the box suits high-crime areas where solar panels are frequently stolen.
The project has had three successful pilots and the team hopes to start exporting to Nigeria and Mozambique in 2016.
The Sisal Decorticator is a mechanised peeler which makes it more profitable for natural sisal fibre to be processed, giving the industry a competitive boost against popular synthetics. Sisal is used in rope, paper, hardboard, textiles, mattresses and more. The world uses more than 90 million tons of fibre a year, making this a big market for the innovator’s customers.
Joel Kariuki is a mechanical engineer from Kenya who invented the peeler to benefit farmers and fibre manufacturers. He believes that speeding up the sisal production process through mechanisation will make it profitable again, and swing the market away from polluting synthetic fibre products and back to natural and biodegradable fibres that grow abundantly in Africa.
The world fibre market consumption was at about 95.6 million tons in 2015. The Sisal Decorticator is designed to pay for itself within a single month, replacing the manual process currently used in the industry. It simply removes the core of the sisal leaf, leaving intact the fibre that serves as a valuable product for many small-scale farmers in Kenya and the rest of the continent.
The prototype has been through extensive testing, and Kariuki hopes that the innovation will help reduce inter-community conflicts in arid regions of Kenya where sisal farming could prove a viable alternative to subsistence farming.
The Tank Mkononi Monitoring system allows the millions of people who use water tanks in irrigation systems in Kenya to ensure that the precious resource is not being wasted.
In Kenya 40% of urban people and 60% of rural people lack access to a safe and reliable water source. As a result, water tanks are popular throughout Kenya. It can take a small-scale farmer up to three hours to irrigate a farm from his water tank, but the Tank Mkononi system speeds up the process by automating it.
The solar powered water distribution and tank monitoring system can be controlled via a mobile phone, and monitor the levels in water tanks, allowing the user to remotely open and close valves and pumps to distribute water or refill the tank.
Gacheru, a 26 year old water resource engineer, estimates that through proper monitoring and management of water tanks, Tank Mkononi users will be able to save more than 30% of their water. He is currently testing the prototype on a small-scale rural farm in Kenya.
The Green Rock Drill is a solar-powered alternative to modern fossil-fuel rock drills. It’s better for the environment, has a life-span of 18 months and is designed for small-scale, artisanal mining in Tanzania.
Tanzanian engineer Lawrence Ojok invented the Green Rock Drill, which can also be powered by a pedal and sucks up the fine dust released during mining, reducing air pollution.
The mechanised drill eases the drudgery of hand-chiseling often practiced in artisanal mining, and fills the gap between the tools of manual miners and the expensive fossil fuel drills used in larger mining operations. The Green Rock Drill, currently in its prototype stage, generates the rotation and hammering action necessary for rock drilling.
With more than eight million small-scale and artisanal miners working in Africa, Ojok is confident his Green Rock Drill will find market success, and the Tanzanian State Mining Corporation and the Small Scale Miners Association have shown interest.
The multi-purpose E-Con Wheelchair was designed by Kenyan mechanical engineering student, Peter Mbiria, originally for a friend with arthritis.
The E-Con wheelchair is a culmination of many solutions in one versatile innovation. The wheelchair can go off-road, climb up and down stairs, allow the user to stand upright and automatically navigate familiar terrain, all while keeping its passenger perfectly level.
Unique designs, such as having four sets of three wheels and the ability to re-arrange wheels in order to get the user out of a tight space, make the world easier to navigate for users with physical health challenges.
Data collected creates a database of statistics about the user’s health, and the wheelchair will encourage the user to do things like stretch or drink water according to their health records.
The innovation’s aim is to increase a disabled person’s enable the disabled to function without help from others.
Dagadu’s team was identified following the 2015 Ebola outbreak to help manage future disasters, and CodeRed is now used in 14 ambulance stations covering 4.2 million Ghanaians in Accra, the capital city. There are 132 ambulance stations in total, and the team plan to grow CodeRed beyond their home country.
CodeRed wants to help the Ghana National Ambulance Service to meet the World Health Organisation standard of an eight minute reaction time, even when telecommunications are unavailable.
Mama-Ope is a biomedical smart jacket that helps doctors identify pneumonia faster and more accurately. Fitted to the patient, the device measures temperature and breathing rates and listens to the sound of the patient’s lungs, and then compares its results to a database of parameters. The jacket, currently a prototype, can diagnose pneumonia three times faster than a doctor and reduce human error.
The jacket has four monitoring points that capture sounds which are amplified, filtered and analysed within the device. The results, along with the child’s temperature reading, are sent to a mobile phone app via Bluetooth.
Ugandan engineer Brian Turyabagye designed the smart jacket to quickly and accurately diagnose the deadly disease which kills 27,000 Ugandan children under the age of five every year. Most of these cases are due to pneumonia being misdiagnosed as malaria.
Many Ugandan health practitioners do not have a deep understanding of the differences between malaria and pneumonia.
The jacket is currently in a prototype stage, and in addition to diagnosing patients, a data platform also keeps a history of cases, which can aid the government in combating the disease.
The Water&Solar100, a sun-tracking solar-cooker solves the myriad of problems which have made solar cookers unpopular to date.
It’s lightweight and portable, tracks the sun automatically, has temperature and timing controls, and even generates electricity to charge batteries. It’s a safe, convenient and sustainable solution to fossil fuel cooking, reducing electricity costs and giving rural homes easy to use solutions.
The device can also generate electricity, charge batteries and sterilise water and medical instruments in areas where alternative equipment isn’t available.
