Nigerian, three different Africans to compete for £25,000 engineering prize

Nigerian engineer, Chukwuemeka Eze, and three others from South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda have emerged as finalists for the 2023 Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation.

The 4 finalists, who have been chosen from an preliminary shortlist of 15 African innovators, will probably be competing for a £25,000 grand prize.

The three others are Edmund Wessels, a South African biomedical engineer, Gibson Kawago, a Tanzanian electrical engineer, and Anatoli Kirigwajjo, a Ugandan software program engineer.

Based by the UK’s Royal Academy of Engineering, the Africa Prize, which is in its ninth yr, is Africa’s greatest prize devoted to engineering innovation, in accordance with an official assertion Thursday.

The Royal Academy famous within the assertion that the ninth winner will probably be introduced in Accra, Ghana, on 6 July, and that the opposite three finalists will obtain £10,000 every.

About finalists, improvements

The organisers famous within the assertion that the finalists have been chosen “for his or her confirmed capacity to harness engineering to deal with frequent issues confronted by Africans throughout the continent,” including that the improvements sort out challenges central to the UN’s Sustainable Improvement Targets.

The improvements that made it to the ultimate embrace electromobility bike conversion, a conveyable uterine inspection gadget, energy packs created from recycled batteries, and an area digital safety community for neighborhood security.

Mr Eze, who’s {an electrical} engineer, developed the Revive Equipment, a modular e-mobility service used to transform gas-powered three-wheeled motorbikes to run on rechargeable lithium-ion batteries.

His innovation will allow drivers to avoid wasting as much as 60 per cent in operational prices, together with fuel or petrol, and 90 per cent in upkeep prices.

On the options of the innovation, the academy highlighted that the Revive Equipment contains lithium-ion batteries, an AC induction motor, a retrofit shaft and an digital controller, which acts because the inverter.

It additionally features a vehicle-to-home energy adapter, hall-effect sensors that interface the throttle and the motor to the controller to find out and regulate motor pace.

“With surging gas costs in Africa, the Revive Equipment goals to be a part of the answer. Too many drivers are spending over 60 per cent of their income on petrol and upkeep; we purpose to ship an inexpensive and sustainable transport system which is environmentally pleasant,” it famous.

The South-African engineer developed FlexiGyn, a battery-powered transportable handheld gadget enabling gynaecologists to diagnose and deal with a lady’s uterus with out anaesthetic or costly gear, rising girls’s entry to reproductive healthcare, notably in distant areas.

Whereas Mr Kawago from Tanzanian developed the WAGA PAWA Pack, a chargeable energy supply created from recycled laptop computer lithium-ion batteries, offering a dependable and inexpensive electrical energy supply.

About Africa prize, academy’s effort

For the reason that initiative was based in 2014, the Royal Academy mentioned it has supported greater than 130 entrepreneurs throughout 20 African nations by the Africa Prize with a rigorous enterprise coaching programme and lifelong assist by the Africa Prize alumni community.

“Greater than 70 per cent of the alumni’s engineering and expertise companies now generate income. Between them, the Africa Prize alumni have raised greater than USD 14 million in grants and fairness funding and created greater than 3,600 jobs, nearly half of them for ladies,” it acknowledged.

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It famous that the Africa Prize runs yearly and is designed to deliver collectively particular person innovators altering their communities, including that the 2024 Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation is now open for entries, and the deadline for entries is 25 July 2023.

The academy additionally defined that the prize is devoted to creating African innovators and serving to them to maximise their impression.

“It offers commercialisation assist to bold African innovators creating scalable engineering options to deal with native challenges, demonstrating the significance of engineering as an enabler of improved high quality of life and financial improvement,” it added.