Two South African doctors are among the ten people nominated for the Innovation Prize for Africa, the African Innovation Foundation announced on Monday.
South Africans Dr Imogen Wright (South Africa), who invented Exatype – a software solution that enables healthcare workers to determine HIV positive patients’ responsiveness to ARV drugs and Dr Kit Vaughan whose innovation, Aceso, is an imaging technology, are among the top ten innovators in Africa.
The Innovation Prize for Africa (IPA), now in its fifth year, is “the premier innovation initiative in the African continent”, said IPA Director Pauline Mwjawamariya Koelbl.
The competition, this year under the theme “Made in Africa”, awards a grand share prize of $150 000, as well as other initiatives, to “spur growth and prosperity in Africa through home-grown solutions” aimed at capturing the continent’s innovative spirit and position it as a global leader.
Koelbl said that over the past five years, she had seen “innovation grow from a mere buzzword to a sturdy path for African growth in multi-disciplinary industries across the continent”.
“As Africans, we have the talent, potential and clout to solve our own problems with ingenuity too, and IPA is testimony of this.”
A growing number of innovators and innovation enablers have expressed interest in the prize over the years and Koelbl said that to date, IPA had attracted more than 6 000 innovators from 50 African countries. This, she said, made the prize a “truly Pan African initiative”.
For this year, a record number of over 3,600 innovators had submitted applications and out of these applications, there were 985 successful submissions from 46 African countries.
Koelbl said the notable innovations among the entries for this year showed “new breakthroughs in malaria and other public health burdens, smart solutions for farmers and dynamic energy initiatives”.
AIF chairperson Walter Fust said he was impressed by the level of submissions for this year’s prize.
“As we celebrate the five-year IPA journey, our mission to engage, inspire and transform is evident in the IPA process – from the growing registrations, to the level of talent and ingenuity we see in the nominees, as well as the enthusiasm from our expert judges in seeing these innovations at work to solve some of Africa’s intractable challenges,” said Fust.
“Now while we await announcement of the winner, we call on all innovation enablers to join hands with us to unlock the potential of these nominees.”
The ten nominees for this year were in the following categories:
Tackling malaria and other public health burdens: Dr Eddy Agbo (Nigeria) who created a Urine Test for Malaria that can diagnose malaria in less than 25 minutes by using technology that detects malaria parasite proteins in a patient’s urine; Valentin Agon (Benin) who pioneered Api-Palu, an anti-malaria drug treatment developed out of natural plant extract and which is significantly cheaper than available anti-malarial drugs with great inhibitory effects on 3D7 strains of plasmodium falciparum the causative agent of malaria; Dr Imogen Wright (South Africa) who invented Exatype, a software solution that enables healthcare workers to determine HIV positive patients’ responsiveness to ARV drug treatment through a DNA sequence that highlights through a simple report which drugs patients are resistant to and Dr Kit Vaughan (South Africa) whose innovation, Aceso, is an imaging technology that is capable of performing full-field digital mammography and automated breast ultrasound at the same time, dramatically improving breast cancer detection.
Design architecture and learning platforms: Dr Youssef Rashed (Egypt) whose innovation, The Plate Package is a robust software solution that assesses the architecture of building plans or technical drawings, determining structural integrity of the end design that enables engineers to represent building slabs over sophisticated foundation models easily, building information modelling techniques and eliminating human error and Godwin Benson (Nigeria) for Tuteria, an an innovative peer-to-peer learning online platform that allows people who want to learn any skill, whether formal or informal, to connect with anyone else in proximity who is offering that skill.
Smart farming solutions: Olufemi Odeleye (Nigeria) for The Tryctor, which is a mini tractor modelled on the motorcycle and which enables farmers to carry out similar operations as a conventional tractor on a smaller scale and Samuel Rigu (Kenya) whose innovation, a low-cost fertilizer called Safi Sarvi Organics that is made from organic products and waste from farm harvests helps farmers to improve yields by 30%.
Dynamic energy initiatives: Andre Nel (South Africa) for the Green Tower innovation which is an off-grid water heating and air conditioning solution based on solar power that uses advanced thermos-dynamics to create up to 90% savings in electricity consumption and Johan Theron (South Africa) for the PowerGuard creation that enables consumers to determine the maximum amount of power supply required for daily operations.
The IPA 2016 Made in Africa ceremony and its first Innovation Ecosystems Connector would take place from June 22 to 23 in Gaborone, Botswana.