AIF announces the top 10 nominees for Innovation Prize for Africa 2017

“The African Innovation Foundation (AIF) recently announced the top 10 nominees who will be contending for the 2017 Innovation Prize for Africa (IPA), to be awarded in Accra, Ghana on 18th July 2017. Innovators from nine African countries including Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Kenya, Liberia, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe have been shortlisted for the prestigious Prize”.

Now celebrating its sixth year under the theme “African Innovation: Investing in Prosperity”, IPA is the premier innovation initiative in the African continent, offering a grand share-prize of US$185,000 and incentives to spur growth and prosperity in Africa through home-grown solutions.

In this sixth edition, the IPA wants to promote more investment in home-grown innovations as well as intra-African collaboration and trade to allow the scaling up of viable innovations across borders.

Find below the shortlisted top 10 IPA nominees and a summary of their innovations:

Innovations in communications and smart solutions

1. Peris Bosire, Kenya: FarmDrive

FarmDrive is a financial technology company that has developed a mobile phone based application that collects data and provides an alternative risk assessment model for small holder farmers. FarmDrive has developed a new methodology for assessing credit worthiness of farmers that has led to higher acceptance rate of loan applications by farmers while maintaining a very low default rate.

2. Nokwethu Khojane, South Africa: Lakheni, Turning Social Capital into Buying Power

Lakheni is a social and business model innovation which seeks to aggregate low-income households into buying-groups in order to negotiate favourable discounts for goods and services supplied to these households.

3. Omolabake Adenle, Nigeria: Voice Recognition and Speech Synthesis Software for African Languages

This is a software solution that can understand and digitize spoken African languages, and synthesize speech from African languages presented as digitized text. Digitizing African languages in this way allows Africans to interact with hardware devices such as mobile phones, and digital services such as call-center applications by speaking their local language. The software can be integrated into a wide range of devices and third-party software applications.

4. Nzola Swasisa, Democratic Republic of Congo: Lokole

Lokole, is a device that enables access to efficient email communication anywhere with cellular coverage at a price that is one hundred to one thousand times cheaper than accessing email via regular cellular bandwidth costs. Lokole achieves this firstly by creating a shareable local area network where up to a hundred users within a 25 meters’ radius can access the network and share the costs. Secondly, it contains advanced algorithms that compress email and also schedules uploads and downloads of data to when data bundles costs are at their cheapest. Costs per user could be as little as $0.01/person/day.

Leveraging artificial intelligence and mechanical solutions

5. Badr Idriss, Morocco: Atlan Space

Atlan Space develops software technology that is then deployed to manage the operations of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones. The software is currently tested for use in managing operations in detecting illegal or harmful maritime activity such as illegal fishing or oil spills over wide expanse areas.

6. Aly El-Shafei, Egypt: Smart Electro-Mechanical Actuator Journal Integrated Bearing “SEMAJIB”

The patented innovation (SEMAJIB) consists of a magnetic bearing imbedded in an oil-filled journal bearing, thus forming the smart controllable bearing. The flooding of the bearing with oil is a game changer as the purpose of bearings has traditionally been to expel oil. There is a significant improvement in turbine performance using the SEMAJIB particularly in single line combined cycle plants, as well as conventional generator technology. The device is designed to be used to support energy generating turbines and can be used to improve efficiency and reduce costs of generating energy in Africa.

Discoveries in healthcare solutions

7. Dougbeh-Chris Nyan, Liberia: New Technology for Rapid Detection of Many Infections Using Only One Test

This is a rapid diagnostic test that can detect and simultaneously differentiate at least three to seven infections at the same time within 10 to 40 minutes. Additionally, the device is able to detect and distinguish multiple infections which bear the same symptoms for instance, when a patient has yellow fever, malaria, and Ebola. Whereas most testing methods take 3 – 7 days, this device gives test results in 10 – 40 minutes.

8. Olanisun Olufemi Adewole, Nigeria: Sweat TB Test, A non-invasive rapid skin test to detect Tuberculosis

Sweat TB Test, is a non-invasive rapid diagnostic test to detect tuberculosis (TB).  The test leverages on TB specific marker in sweat of patients, to produce a point- of- care test to detect TB, within ten minutes, without any needle prick.

9. Gift Gana, Zimbabwe: Dr. CADx

Dr CADx is a software solution that helps doctors and health care workers diagnose medical images more accurately. Dr CADx uses deep learning to interpret medical images and achieve an accuracy of 82% an improvement over the 70% average for radiologists. Dr CADx is designed to work in low resource settings with poor internet connectivity opening it up for use in many rural settings in Africa.

10. Philippa Ngaju Makobore, Uganda: Electronically Controlled Gravity Feed Infusion Set (ECGF)

The Electronically Controlled Gravity Feed Infusion Set (ECGF) is a medical device designed to accurately administer intravenous (IV) fluids and drugs by controlling the rate of fluid flow based on feedback from a drop sensor.

To find out more about activities and partnership opportunities regarding the Innovation Prize of Africa, visit: event.innovationprizeforafrica.org.

Source: How We Made it in Africa