Kofo Akinkugbe is the founder and CEO of SecureID Nigeria Ltd, a market leader in smart card technology and digital security. The company is a world-class manufacturing facility with the only smart card production plant in West Africa and is one of only six on the continent.
The Ugandan social enterprise Smart Havens Africa is helping vulnerable communities acquire homes affordably and sustainably. In this way, founder Anne Rweyora, one of the engineers short-listed for the fifth Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation, hopes to bring down housing poverty.
Money transfer platform Kaoshi was one of the technologies shortlisted for the fifth Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation is tackling the broken system of international money transfer. The shortlist, which covered six countries, included this easy and secure online platform that exchanges currencies peer to peer, instead of through banks. This cuts costs and waiting times.
Twelve tech startups have been selected for the third Google Launchpad Africa accelerator. The three-month programme connects startups from around the world with Google staff, networks, methodologies and technologies, and has worked with market leaders in over 40 countries.
The Ghana Health Service is working with Zipline, the drone company best known for starting blood delivery services in Rwanda, to deliver medicine to remote parts of the country that are hard to reach by road. The initiative is a major step towards giving every Ghanaian access to life-saving medicine.
Power outages are frequent and random in Nigeria. To solve this problem, a university in Nigeria has built an organic waste power-generating plant to provide electricity to the whole university. This is the first such innovation by a Nigerian university to help address the power shortage in that country.
Despite an abundance of food when production conditions are favourable, the intermittent supply of power and poor storage facilities often mean that staple foods such as vegetables and fruit are lost after being harvested. Two African entrepreneurs are working to curb this waste.
EBAgroPamoja App is Africa’s first ever wealth creation tool developed by youth through Innovative Volunteerism. EBAgroPamoja is an enterprise that connects people to agro-industrialization solutions to maximize productivity, working to reduce post harvest losses.
“The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind” is the story of a Malawian boy who puts his education and science to work to build a wind turbine, saving his village from famine. The film, set to debut on Netflix, was shot in Malawi despite investor concerns.
Africa’s first hybrid electric vehicle was driven through Uganda’s business district, showcasing this advance in automation and the promising future of locally made energy-effective vehicles on local roads.
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