8 startups from Kenya, Nigeria and Egypt have been selected for the 2020 American Society of Mechanical Engineers Innovation Showcase (ASME ISHOW), which will be virtually held, TechMoran.com reports.
The 8 startups are regional finalists of the 2020 international accelerator of hardware-led social innovation. The inventors will present their design prototypes in a virtual event held May 19-21.
The ISHOW Kenya finalists will pitch their prototypes at 6 p.m. East Africa Time/11 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time on Tuesday, May 19 via web conference. The finalists will vie for a share of $30,000 in seed grants and technical support to help bring their design innovations to market. Three hardware innovations will be selected from the finalists as grand prize winners.
The regional finalists are:
BURN Manufacturing Co. (Ruiru, Kenya) for its “Kuniokoa TURBO Stove” — a forced draft biomass stove that is compatible with Pay-As-You-Go (“PAYG”) solar systems and is more efficient and cleaner-burning than the company’s innovative Kuniokoa stove.
The TURBO decreases time to boil by ~60% , decreases the tending interval by 30%, and can burn wood fuel with up to 27% moisture content (wet basis) as clean as liquified petroleum gas. Once launched, it will be the only production household cookstove in the world that achieves ISO/IWA “Tier 4” performance with agricultural waste briquettes.
Dunamis-Cognitio (Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria) for its “Ina Lite” — a sustainable, affordable, portable, light-weight, thermoelectric generator that harnesses heat energy to generate electricity accessible from a USB power port.
Ecobora Company (Nairobi, Kenya) for its “Solar Cooking Boiler” – The company is equipping rural marginalized schools with its patented solar-powered cook stove that permits around the clock cooking by tapping the sun’s energy and storing it in a repurposed oil tank with waste motor oil as an effective carbon sink tank, eliminating the need for firewood. The stove is affordable and provides heat energy even during rainy seasons. The money saved equips science and computer laboratories to offer quality education to students.
ECO Egypt (Cairo, Egypt) for its “ECO Food Dehydrators” — ECO is the only Arab food dehydrator provider and the second in Africa. It enables farmers to turn crop surpluses that usually go to waste into powdered food in just hours, allowing farmers a 30-fold increase in revenues that benefits rural women and enhances food security.
Green Pavers (Nairobi, Kenya)
for its “Styro-Plastic Densifier” — which turns tons of waste plastic littering the streets and landfills into durable and affordable building materials, making cities and communities more green-friendly and sustainable.
Inteco Kenya Ltd. (Nairobi, Kenya) for its “Ari” sanitary pad dispenser system – Inteco works in the menstrual hygiene ecosystem and focuses on the distribution and supply chain management of donated sanitary pads to adolescent girls in schools. The company secures the value chain by ensuring that sanitary pads are being used by the intended user, and create cheaper systems for accountability and monitoring by installing sanitary pads dispensers in schools, where students can get pads using near field communication (NFC) cards.
MicroFuse Technologies (Lagos, Nigeria) for its “Cipher” technology — a tool that enables its user to diagnose and detect cerebral malarial retinopathy with a smartphone while also capturing other individual patient data. This tool would be of immense help in urban settings and remote areas where it can be a split-second decision to treat a child for malaria or consider other causes of illness that could be life-threatening as well.
Zuhura Solutions (Nairobi, Kenya) for its “Halisi Trolley” — a transportable solar-powered street food vending trolley, fitted with a solar panel, lithium battery, tamper-proof AC and DC charging system, mobile phone charging component, and an interface that can monitor both the temperature of the trolley to the precise location of the Trolley itself.
“We are proud to offer a forum for engineering problem-solving that truly improves lives,” said ASME Executive Director/CEO Tom Costabile. “We are continually impressed by the creative talent of ASME ISHOW participants and their passion for helping underserved communities around the world.”
ISHOW Kenya winners will be announced in a virtual awards ceremony on Wednesday,May 27at 6 p.m. East Africa Time/11 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time via the ASME ISHOW website. A virtual ISHOW was held last month for finalists from India and finalists from the Americas will participate in a virtual ISHOW USA event in July.
In addition, the product with the most votes in social media for each regional event will be named the “Fan Favorite’’ and will receive $1,000.
