The final round of the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation was won by two engineers from South Africa, Edmund Wessels of Flexigyn and Anatoli Kirigwajjo of Yunga from Uganda.
Two other participants, a Nigerian engineer named Chukwuemeka Eze, owner of Revive Kit, and a Tanzanian engineer named Gibson Kawago, owner of WAGA PAWA Pack, each received $10,000. They also received medals, certificates, and branded wear Ghana T-shirts.
At the awards ceremony in Accra on Thursday, four finalists gave pitches before a panel of judges selected the winners.
One to Watch category winner CoolMax, a Nigerian engineer and owner of ThinkBikes, received £5,000 in addition to a certificate out of the other 11 selected candidates.
The largest award in Africa for encouraging and scaling up engineering innovation is the Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation, established by the Royal Academy of Engineering in the United Kingdom in 2014. Since its founding, it has assisted over 130 business owners in 20 African nations.
Through the alumni network of the Africa Prize, the entrepreneurs receive a rigorous business training curriculum and ongoing project assistance.
Professor Elsie Effah Kaufman, dean of the University of Ghana’s School of Engineering Sciences, spoke at the occasion and stated that innovation was not just limited to the engineering field and that it had many obstacles to overcome.
She listed some of the difficulties African innovators face as being limited access to capital, infrastructure, and technological resources, difficulties reaching underserved populations, bridging the digital divide, navigating complicated regulatory frameworks and bureaucracies, and a lack of funding for research.
She said that because African inventors were tenacious and resourceful, they were able to take advantage of their particular conditions and come up with ground-breaking ideas for the socioeconomic advancement of the continent.
“By capitalizing on the available opportunities and addressing the challenges head-on, African innovators have shown again the potential to drive transformational change and shape and prosperous future for the continent,” she said.
She also passionately urged all African women innovators to take part completely in future competitions for the Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation and help develop future-oriented solutions.
Owner of Yunga, Anatoli Kirigwajjo claimed that his business was founded after he lost property valued at over $1,300 in a break-in with little likelihood of the thieves being apprehended.
“With the help of our domestic networks, communities should become less attractive to criminals, he said. This should protect the safety and open up opportunities for economic activity”.
He invited all African innovators to submit applications for the next Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation since it will give them a platform to expand their enterprises, make connections with the right people, and support them in doing so.
Flexigyn’s owner, Edmund Wessels, stated that after taking part in the initiative, he and his staff realized that providing the correct equipment to gynecologists alone was insufficient and that “we need to do more to help women across the continent.”
He continued by saying that anyone might become an engineer by learning on their own and attempting to change the world.