SOUTH AFRICA'S FIRST-EVER AU-EU INNOVATION FESTIVAL

innovations from Africa and Europe on the AU-EU Research and Innovation Cooperation Agenda's four priority areas: public health, green transition, innovation & technology, and capacities for science. These will be articulated into short-, medium-, and long-term actions.

By: Phenyo Mathapo

On 15 June 2023, the European Union, African Union, and the Republic of South Africa hosted the first-ever AU-EU Innovation Festival at the Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC) in South Africa. It built on the AU-EU Innovation Agenda Stakeholder Event's success in Nairobi, Kenya, in November 2022.

This was a one-day hybrid launch event, which could be attended in person and online. The event took place two days after adopting the AU-EU Innovation Agenda at the second AU-EU Research & Innovation (R&I) Ministerial Meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. It encouraged the implementation phase of the newly adopted AU-EU Innovation Agenda. This new joint policy initiative aims to advance the translation of Research & Innovation into businesses, services, jobs and products in Africa and Europe. It is predicted to run from June 2023 till June 2026, the first three years from the adoption.

Agora sessions on youth and women-led innovations were held. There were also pitching sessions and exhibitions of

The final pitching event of the Open Innovation Challenges of the Horizon 2020 project "ENRICH in Africa", a project designed to assemble core stakeholders from Africa and Europe to strengthen and support their shared innovation ecosystem, was featured. This was followed by an award ceremony which was attended by corporate sponsors.

Projects such as a text-based chatbot that combines satellite data analytics and artificial intelligence to identify damaged plants, an umbilical cord and placenta simulator and Cropfix, among others, were displayed.

The event was supported by the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) and targeted innovation stakeholders, businesses, investors, the public sector, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and civil society representatives across Africa and Europe. The initiative focused on the innovations of women and the youth, in part of the support for young people during June, commemorating the 16 June Soweto uprising and celebrating the youth of South Africa. This festival was an ideal platform to meet with potential international project partners.

Young

By: Lauren Jamy

In recent years, Africa has become an innovation hub, particularly in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). Young individuals across the continent are pushing boundaries and creating ground-breaking solutions to address local challenges and make a global impact.

We explore five remarkable STEM innovations by young Africans that are revolutionising their communities and inspiring the world.

The Boy, William Kamkwamba, who harnessed the wind At 14, after being forced to drop out of school, William Kamkwamba developed a windmill that produced electricity and water for his home. This was only the beginning, as the young Malawian later created more windmills and a solarpowered water pump that became a primary water source for his community.

William's journey didn't come without hardships as a result of poverty. His interest in energy development started when he started borrowing books to read. His prototype (an early version of a product created to test a concept or process) consisted of a blade, an old shock absorber and blue gum trees.

What followed was only bigger and better things as he went on to generate clean water, fight malaria and provide solar power and lighting for his family and the community. His success led to his recognition by many others, and he soon returned to schooling. He graduated in 2014 and went on to publish an autobiography titled, "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind", which was also adapted into a film.

Kelvin Doe – the friendly neighbourhood energy provider Kelvin Doe hails from West Africa and taught himself to build a generator and radio transmitter at 13. Three years later, he made a battery powerful enough to supply electricity to homes in his community. The battery consisted of acid, soda and metal parts recovered from bins. After Kelvin, who also goes by the name "DJ Focus", was discovered, he entered a competition encouraging young students to showcase their innovations, and this further opened doors for him at well-established institutions, including a signed solar project with the Canadian high-speed service provider, Sierra WiFi. He has also shaken hands with various world leaders and influential personalities and delivered speeches at several local and international functions to share his vision worldwide.

Edwin Inganji put safety first and developed an emergency app Edwin Inganji, a Kenyan programmer, saw the need for emergency services in his neighbourhood after surviving an attack by armed robbers in Nairobi on his way home from school. He refused to sit back and let this become a reality for others by developing an app which offers a distress call function in areas where crime is prevalent.

By shaking your mobile device, family, friends and local support services are instantly notified of your whereabouts and can seek help accordingly. The app has more than 5 000 local users as further advancements are being made to improve the service, such as bringing security firms and ambulance providers on board.

Noah Walakira knitted his way into his own manufacturing company

While many teenagers spend their holidays taking trips to the beach and hanging out with mates, Noah Walakira spent his with his grandma, learning to knit. At the time, it may have been an unusual way to enjoy the school break, but his developing skills led him to his first entrepreneurial breakthrough at 14.

He launched his own knitting company by knitting jerseys for schools in Kampala, and this became a stepping stone towards an established community-based company that specialises in manufacturing various uniforms. His clientele grew outside of Kenya, with more than 40 schools in Uganda, clientele in Rwanda, South Sudan, and Tanzania, and other institutions such as security companies and petrol stations.

Spice Girls? More like the Space Girls

Ayesha Salle, Brittany Bull, Bhanekazi Tandwa and Sesam Mngqengqiswa are part of a group of South African girls who dominate female empowerment in science and technology. Driven to have their names written on more than just the school desks, these girls aim for recognition in historical books as they take on Africa's first private satellite into space. The scholars from Cape Town are part of a project designing and building a satellite that will hover in space, orbit the Earth's poles, scan the surface of Africa and gather/transmit data useful for agriculture and food production within the continent.