Tag: innovation

COVID-19 crisis could accelerate African businesses toward innovation and digitization

olivia Craig
Mali based insurtech startup OKO Finance helps rural farmers access crop insurance innovation

McKinsey recently released a report titled, “Reopening and reimagining Africa: How the COVID-19 crisis can catalyze change,” which recommends policies aimed to help Africa use the crisis as an opportunity to create a recovery that features a more inclusive economy, more competitive industries, and more resilient services The report recommends using the pandemic as an opportunity to accelerate digital transformation across the continent. Figure 1 highlights a number of industries poised for swift growth in digitization following the pandemic. Among these, some are already relatively digitized, such as information and…

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Innovators create App to assist with Cancer awareness

Dianne Jacobs
Cancer

Late cancer diagnosis due to lack of adequate information has been cited as some of the drawbacks in the fight against the disease. However this may now become a thing of the past thanks to a new innovation. A group of three youths in Eldoret have developed a mobile platform to assist cancer patients obtain proper and correct information on the disease. Salim Bakari, one of the developers of the app dubbed Cancer and Chronic Diseases Focus, says they found that there is a widespread lack of information on cancer…

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Drivers and travelers connected via app

MTN Rwanda

After completing their university studies in computer science, classmates Ngugi Waithima and Denis Kiprono looked for jobs in vain. In June, the two former students of computer science at Mount Kenya University met in a Nairobi office in a job-hunting mission. Later over a cup of tea, they discussed their challenges in search of non-existent jobs. Their talk shifted to escalating traffic jams in Nairobi and the problems people face when travelling over the festive season. It’s from their traffic discussion that they hit some sort of Eureka moment. They…

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Innovation that will help with the provision of clean water

Dianne Jacobs
DPA

Kenya’s quest to fulfill the need for clean water mainly in rural areas could be finally met after five university students invented a solar-powered water desalinator. The group calling itself, The Greatest of All Time (Goat), which comprises students from Kenyatta University, University of Nairobi and Strathmore University was unveiled at this year’s IBM Digital-Nation Africa: Smart Water Challenge. Goat’s innovation also uses Internet of Things (IoT) sensors to prevent water pipes from bursting by keeping the piping system fully functional. The team which won a paid internships with IBM…

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Ethena Startup creates a Sexual Harassment Software

Dianne Jacobs
Ethena

Ethena, a software startup, is making it easier to customize sexual harassment training for employees. The company is aiming to make the delicate topic of sexual harassment training more engaging and less uncomfortable for both employees and executives. It believes that something as important as sexual harassment training certainly should not be a cookie-cutter experience. Instead, the software, which is currently set to be released in January of the new year, promises to offer a unique educational experience for each employee and one that just might make them look forward…

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Technology’s Involvement in the Pet Care Industry

Dianne Jacobs
pet

The pet industry is a growing industry around the world but mostly in USA. Pet owners keep increasing day by day hence making the industry grow. Silicon Valley seems to have itself a new “pet” project. But it’s not just any kind of project. It is for an industry that is projected to be worth $281 billion by 2023. The pet-related business has been gaining grounds, with sales exceeding $225 billion in North America alone in 2018. Whether the economy is tough or not, owners have to take care of their…

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Kenya ranks 3rd in Sub-Saharan Africa in the 2018 Global Innovation Index

Editor
Orange

Kenya has won the third place in Sub-Saharan Africa in the Global Innovation Index (GII) 2018 coming after South Africa and Mauritius. Kenya achieves high levels of innovation relative to its level of development, a continuous performance since 2011. Strengths for Kenya are access to credit (especially microfinance loans), innovation linkages and exports of creative services, such as R&D financed by abroad, workforce efficiency and printing and other media. Now in its 11th edition, the GII is a detailed quantitative tool that helps global decision makers better understand how to…

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Intellectual Property protection: The key incentive to innovation

Dianne Jacobs

Intellectual property rights , patents in particular , are perhaps most critical in industries characterized by high fixed costs of development and low marginal costs of production. Intellectual property (IP) protections are fundamentally about encouraging the innovation that drives human progress. And these protections have been extraordinarily successful contributing to rapid increases in global living standards over the past two centuries The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) took a deeper look at the latest data on the strength of IP laws and the amount of innovative, creative output around…

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Top 10 CEOs Innovating the African Tech Industry

Staff Writer
DPA

African Tech 10. Alpesh Patel, Oju Africa Created in 2012, Oju Africa is part of Mi-Group International and is the first African-centric Emoticon provider. Running the show is Apesh Patel who has set his sights high in trying to bring Apple on board to diversify its range of emoticons; the word ‘Oju’ literally meaning ‘faces’ in the Yoruba language from its native Nigeria. 9. Barbara Mallinson, Obami Voted as one of the top young people to take to lunch, Barbara Mallinson has been labelled as one of the most refreshing…

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