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Life-saving smart jacket wins top prize at Pitch@Palace Africa 2017

Parizad Mangi

A biomedical smart jacket that diagnoses pneumonia, created by Ugandan engineers, has won the Pitch@Palace Africa 2017 contest at St James Palace.


The MamaOpe, which means "mother's hope," jacket correctly distinguishes between pneumonia - which kills 27,000 Ugandan children every year - and malaria. The signs for the two diseases are very similar, making is difficult for health professionals to differentiate. 

The inventor of the jacket, Brian Turyabagye, is one of 16 African entrepreneurs who arrived to the UK to pitch their ideas, with the aim of building technologies that would tackle problems back home.

Each entrepreneur presented a pitch, after which it was down to the public to vote. Members of the Queen’s guard stood to attention, blowing their trumpets whenever a pitch ran over time.

The contest is running for the third consecutive year, and is designed to address "the shortage of engineers in Africa," said Prince Andrew, who presented Turyabagye with the top prize. The prince added that there were 50 times fewer engineers in the whole of Africa than in the UK. 

Turyabagye's smart jacket uses sensors to spot pneumonia three times faster than doctors. It also reduces human error, by tracking sound patterns from lungs, body temperature and the rate of breathing. Once the diagnosis is made, the jacket transfers the data via Bluetooth to an app, for analysis by a doctor.

The sun for tuktuks

Second prize went to Kuza Automotive, a company that retrofits tuktuks with solar-powered motors, to replace polluting engines that burn fossil fuels. Kuza's tuktuks would cost $1 a day to run compared to the $4-a-day fuel used by a traditional tuktuk, “saving $3 a day, which can make a great difference to a household,” said Alex Makalliwa, the founder of the start-up.

Makalliwa once lived in London, but he decided to return to his native Kenya, to help tuktuk drivers like his uncle. Makalliwa’s team also aims to provide a network of off-grid battery swapping stations, for which it plans to carry out trials later this year.

Other solar-powered solutions included Solar Turtle - shipping containers converted into fold-away solar power stations, to prevent solar panel theft, and Green Rock Drill, a mining drill that uses solar energy to reduce noise and costs.

Many inventions relied on the Internet of Things (IoT), a trend that is rapidly spreading across Africa. Two entrepreneurs, for example, used IoT solutions to reduce water shortages.

An app developed by start-up Mazingara measures regional rainfall, and calculates - based on the roof type and area - how much rain water a house can harvest until the next draught; trials have been running successfully in South Africa.

Another firm, Mobitech Water Solutions, developed a low-cost water monitoring system, which uses an SMS platform to help disadvantaged communities locate water and confirm its real-time availability.

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