Ksh.3.3 Million up for Grabs for the Engineering Innovation Competition

Kenyan engineers, across all disciplines, have a chance of winning 3.3 million shillings following the opening of the Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation.

The competition, an initiative of the Royal Academy of Engineering, is open to engineers who provide scalable entrepreneurial solutions for local problems.

The winners will be announced in June 2019 and the Kenyan engineering fraternity will have another chance of producing a winner in the Africa-wide competition.

24-year-old Ugandan software engineer Brian Gitta won the 2018 Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation. Brian was the first Ugandan to win the prestigious Africa Prize and the youngest winner to date.

Gitta and his team developed Matibabu, a device which tests for malaria without drawing blood. Matibabu, which means ‘medical center’ in Swahili, is a low-cost, reusable device that clips onto a patient’s finger, requiring no specialist expertise to operate. The results are available within one minute on a mobile phone that is linked to the device.

In the 2016 edition, Kenya’s Kelvin Gacheru’s innovation Mobi-Water, a smart solar-powered water monitoring system was shortlisted.

Mobi-Water sends a text message alert to up to 10 mobile numbers when water levels drop below a certain point. Users can remotely open and close valves and pumps if they want to refill the tank or redirect the water.