Tag: education

When young talents lead innovation and development in Africa

Posted by khaoula on

“Solving Africa’s complex challenges will require innovative solutions including those developed by young inventors from the African continent. It is important that we create the necessary environment to discover them.”

Sixteen young African investors weree recently shortlisted as finalists of the Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation awarded by the Royal Academy of Engineering.  While the overall winner and three runners up will receive cash funding, all the finalists will receive training and the mentoring they need to scale up their inventions and ultimately translate them into commercial products. The inventions that range from a vertical farm to an online vaccination platform to a device that can convert air into drinking water using solar technology, are bound to deliver practical solutions to Africa’s challenges, including food insecurity.

Indeed, Africa’s recurrent challenges can benefit from many inventions coming off the African continent. Moreover, Africa stands to make more headways when its young people, who represent 60 per cent of its current population, take the lead.

But to pave way for many more inventions from Africa’s young minds, the continent must invest in creating an environment that makes it easy to discoverer these inventors. So how can the African continent pave the way so that many more young inventors are discovered?

Beginning at a young age, when students are attending elementary and high schools, the African education system should make room for young students to be creative, problem solvers and critical thinkers. Currently, the education system, in many countries, including my native country Kenya, and South Africa, is poor quality and mostly focuses on content mastery. I know. The primary and high school I attended in Kenya, for example, focused on teaching theories and materials we needed to pass our national examinations. None of the teachers ever challenged my peers and me to think and create. It was all about mastering the contents and regurgitating them back in the exams. Further, we also lacked other resources including textbooks, libraries, science labs and other resources to help create a conducive environment.

Across Africa, stakeholders investing in education operate under the assumption that passing national examinations gauged by the grades students get is clear evidence that investments in education have paid off. The caveat to this approach is that it does not necessarily prepare students to be inventors or problem solvers and to meaningfully participate in developing our global world.

Moving forward, if Africa wants to reap the dividends of inventions by African students and its young minds, African schools should adopt action-oriented teaching approaches that hone critical thinking skills, creativity and innovation. Africa’s young minds should consistently be challenged to identify local problems, seek out relevant information and resources, and to design authentic plans and solutions to solve the challenges they have identified.

Once discovered, future inventors must be supported through training and mentoring. They must also be funded. Doing so will allow them to fully develop their inventions and translate them into products that offer solutions to the challenges many African citizens face.

The Royal Academy of Engineering prize of mentoring and training support and funding will definitely allow these innovators to translate their inventions into products and to scale up and widely disseminate them. The good news is that, presently, across Africa, there are several programs including The Anzisha Prize, Made in Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Programme and the Innovation Prize for Africa that are actively supporting, mentoring and funding  young African inventors.  This needs to continue.

Moreover, as we aim to pave the way for many African inventors to rise up, while strengthening the overall African innovation ecosystem, we must protect these ideas and ensure that people adhere to intellectual property rights. Before the young inventors’ ideas are shared, they should have the opportunity to trademark and protect them. At the moment, many African countries, research institutions, and universities and other institutions where inventions are born do not understand quite well how to manage intellectual property assets including knowing the available options when they want to protect and translate their inventions into commercial products for national, regional and international markets.

Eventually, when these inventions are translated into products, governments should create market opportunities for their products to ensure that they thrive. For example, government hospitals can buy and install the vertical gardens in hospitals, and these could be used to grow the food to feed patients. The Kenyan Government could use the Chanjo Plus online vaccination platform and roll it out across the country. Further, these inventors must be funded so that they can build industries that further support the production of the products they have created. Such support would further lead to economic empowerment and job creation by the youth and for the youth.

Solving Africa’s complex challenges will require innovative solutions including those developed by young inventors from the African continent. It is important that we create the necessary environment to discover them. Once discovered, we must nurture the inventors, celebrate them, support, and fund their ideas all the way, until they have products and companies to manufacture these products. It is the right thing to do.

Written by Dr Esther Ngumbi,  a distinguished post doctoral researcher at the Entomology Department, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. She is also a food security fellow with the Aspen Institute New Voices.

How Can Research Support Rural Women Farmers and Entrepreneurs to Thrive in Africa?

Posted by khaoula on

Winnie is an entrepreneur from Uganda who runs a successful business making probiotic yogurt and selling to other businesses and schools. When I heard her speak at a recent food security meeting in Ottawa, Canada, I learned that Winnie has not always been this successful.

Winnie’s family had always kept cattle, but most of the milk the cows produced was for consumption by the family. In 2014, Winnie received training from an organization called Yoba for Life on how to use freeze-dried bacteria to produce probiotic yogurt from her family cows’ milk, a practice that has been common in the Netherlands where Yoba for Life is based, but not in Africa. Research conducted by Yoba for Life and Heifer International developed the technology used by Winnie for producing and using freeze-dried bacteria to make yogurt in Uganda.

Winnie started selling the yogurt to neighbors and to the local shopping center. As sales increased, her family milk was not enough, and she started purchasing milk from other women farmers in her neighborhood. Soon, she teamed up with a few other women to start the Kiboga Ikamiro Women’s Group production facility. Using the new freeze-dried bacterial technology, they currently produce 150-200 liters of yogurt per day, earning USD 3500 per month. She has increased her cattle herd to 20 milking cows, employs 27 women and youth in the production facility and built a better house for her family.

Winnie is one of more than half a million women who has been involved in research projects funded under the Canadian Food Security Research Fund, a research program implemented in 24 countries over the last nine years by Canada’s International Development Research Centre and Global Affairs Canada. This program has been hugely successful at helping women, who often provide half of the agricultural labor but do not have the same land rights and access to income as men, improve their livelihoods.

It may be surprising to learn that a program focused on research can help rural women engaged in agriculture and agribusiness to thrive. When people hear of research, they often think of complex experiments done in laboratories by serious looking scientists in white lab coats working on things only they understand. But research can have very practical implications in the lives of people.

I have been a researcher for 20 years now, and I have seen the power of research and innovation in transforming the lives of women like Winnie.

First, research can help identify and develop innovations that enable women to add value to their products and thereby increase their incomes. In Nigeria and Benin, the production of indigenous vegetables has been hampered by low consumption and lack of markets for smallholder farmers. Through several years of research, researchers found new ways and technologies for producing wine and syrups, in addition to the more traditional products such as bread, to add value to these vegetables. Women increased their incomes from indigenous vegetables by over 120 percent.

Second, research can find ways of reducing the drudgery of food production and processing for women. Of the 250 million tons of crops grown in sub-Saharan Africa in 2012, a total of 75 percent were grown by smallholder farmers and these were weeded by hand. Between 50 and 70 percent of these farmers’ time was spent on weeding, and 90 percent of women smallholder farmers carry out this task themselves. In India, processing one bag of millet can take up to two days. As a result, the consumption of millet, a crop that is highly nutritious and has the potential to contribute to better nutrition is rarely consumed in India.  Through research, scientists developed a threshing machine that reduces the time it takes to thrash a bag of millet to two or three hours. As a result, women entrepreneurs using the technology increased their income from US$1800 to US$4500 per annum, close to a three-fold increase.

Third, innovations from research can increase the nutrition and health of women. In the Indian State of Uttar Pradesh, 50 million women and 15 million children suffer from anemia. A new technology that encapsulates salt with iron and iodine has led to the local production of double fortified salt in the state. Between 2014 and 2017, 40,000 metric tonnes of double fortified salt were distributed through India’s public distribution system with 85% of the targeted households purchasing and using the salt on a regular basis. The use of double fortified salt has led to a decline in the prevalence of iron deficiency from 23 to 9 percent.

Finally, research can illuminate the financial needs of women smallholder farmers and entrepreneurs and facilitate the development of appropriate products and access to these products. In Bolivia, researchers working with the Insitucion Financiera De Desarrollo increased the understanding of the fisheries sector by the financial company, leading to dthe evelopment of financial products that suited the needs of women in the sector. Between 2015 and 2017, US$ 1.9M was loaned to women entrepreneurs in the sector with an average loan size of US$ 6000.

For research to work for women, women must be engaged as researchers, producers, business owners, consumers so that they can set their priorities and contribute to the development of innovations that best suit their needs and priorities.

Dr. Jemimah Njuki is a Senior Program Specialist at Canada’s International Development Centre where she works on gender and women’s empowerment. She is an Aspen New Voices 2017 fellow. Follow her @jemimah_njuki

Tap from the pool of young African professionals

Posted by jilles on

When the development of Africa is discussed, most stakeholders often focus more on finances and may be logistics. Human resources are usually overlooked. The few who do think about human resources show little attention to the vast and ever-growing pool of young African professionals based both in and out of the continent. Companies carrying out projects in various industries across the continent have until now depended largely on non-African professionals. The most common flimsy excuse for not using African professionals even in projects for Africa is that, it is hard to find qualified and experienced Africans to do the job. Paradoxically, African countries like Congo (Brazzaville) experienced an unemployment rate of up to 66.9% in recent years and over 20 other African countries have experienced an unemployment rate of between 20 to 40% from 2012 to 2016 according to TradingEconomics.com .
Many platforms uniting African professionals exist. Their common goals are to profile, categorize and orientate these experts towards areas where maximum use of their expertise is in need. One such platform is The African Chamber of Commerce (AFCHAM). Inspired by demands for African professionals by foreign companies investing in Africa, the organization now has a project called the AFCHAM-HR Directory. It is a rich pool of African professionals in any industry you can think of and most of them are all available to start work ASAP as long as the working conditions are right.
Hiring from the AFCHAM-HR Directory is advantageous in the fact that most of the ground work like general background check and preliminary basic skills evaluation are guaranteed and endorsed by AFCHAM, making it easy for the recruiter to focus more on skills related to the particular position in mind. All professionals listed in the program have been checked by AFCHAM officials although this is not an ultimate guarantee that the recruit will satisfy the needs of the employer. Companies or individuals interested in using the AFCHAM-HR Directory service simply have to submit their requests to AFCHAM at hr@afcham-china.org and the department will get in touch for further discussions regarding their needs. It is worth noting that companies in need of African professionals are not necessarily companies based in Africa. Many companies based in other countries need African professionals for other reasons related to their businesses.
African university graduates and working professionals aiming at greater heights in their careers are invited to join this program and get listed as soon as possible before the pool gets flooded. Submit your CVs and portfolios to AFCHAM at cv@afcham-china.org and the department will be in touch to evaluate your skills, career interests before getting you listed. African professionals who are already registered members of AFCHAM enjoy more privileges in this program such as advice on CV writing and interview coaching.
The future of the African continent is in the hands of young African professionals who currently form about 65% of Africa’s population. The African Union in its program dubbed Aspirations for 2063 puts it in the following words: “The aspirations reflect our desire for shared prosperity and well-being, for unity and integration, for a continent of free citizens and expanded horizons, where the full potential of women and youth, boys and girls are realized, and with freedom from fear, disease and want”. The time is now.

D. Nkwetato