Adewole, Adenle, 8 Others Battle for $185,000 Innovation Prize

By Dipo Olowookere

Two Nigerians, Mr Olanisun Olufemi Adewole and Omolabake Adenle have been included alongside eight other nominees to contend for the 2017 Innovation Prize for Africa (IPA) to be awarded in Accra, Ghana on July 18, 2017 by the African Innovation Foundation (AIF).

Now celebrating its sixth year under the theme “African Innovation: Investing in Prosperity”, IPA is the premier innovation initiative in the African continent, offering a grand share-prize of $185,000 and incentives to spur growth and prosperity in Africa through home-grown solutions.

Innovators from nine African countries including Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Kenya, Liberia, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe were shortlisted for the prestigious prize.

This year’s innovators have demonstrated incredible proficiency through innovative solutions addressing challenges in agriculture value chain, health care, energy, communications, service industries as well as surveillance using drone technology.

This year’s cream of the crop underwent a rigorous selection process by a renowned panel of judges including corporates, academia, technology and scientific experts representing top African innovation influencers.

Mr Adewole, a medical doctor, entered the competition with an innovation called ‘Sweat TB Test, A non-invasive rapid skin test to detect Tuberculosis.’

Sweat TB Test, is a non-invasive rapid diagnostic test to detect tuberculosis (TB). TB is second only to HIV/AIDS as a leading cause of death in Africa.

Available methods are high tech; cannot be deployed in rural centres, dependent only sputum which sometimes may not be collectible and considered messy by patients. It is also time consuming with patients making repeated clinic visits before a diagnosis is made. Delay in diagnosis and missed diagnosis of 3million TB cases occur leading to continuous spread of the disease.

Sweat TB Test leverages on TB specific marker in sweat of patients, to produce a point- of- care test to detect TB, within ten minutes, without any needle prick. In simple steps, reports are read and patients commenced on medication as needed at the same clinic visit.

It has the potential to contribute towards effectively controlling TB, reduce TB related deaths and holds promise to prevent drug resistance TB in Africa.

His counterpart, Adenle, came up with Voice Recognition and Speech Synthesis Software for African Languages.

This is a software solution that can understand and digitize spoken African languages, and synthesize speech from African languages presented as digitized text. Digitizing African languages in this way allows Africans to interact with hardware devices such as mobile phones, and digital services such as call-centre applications by speaking their local language. The software can be integrated into a wide range of devices and third-party software applications.

While voice recognition and speech synthesis software have been developed for various Western and Asian languages, there has been very limited commercial application or academic research for African languages.

The difficulty lies in modelling tonality present in most African languages and limited data resources for language modelling. This innovation opens up opportunities for Africans with low literacy levels to also enjoy the benefits of the digital revolution.

“We are pleased to share with you the names of our IPA2017 nominees as we continue on our mission to catalyse the innovation spirit and unlock untapped potential in Africa. For the first time, this year’s nominees include innovators from Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia and Zimbabwe.

“Moreover, given the instrumental role African women play in transforming Africa, it is thrilling to see more women among the 10 nominees with game changing innovations.

“By providing platforms to recognize innovation excellence in Africa and mobilizing for African innovators, we continue to live up to our credo of engaging, inspiring and transforming.

“The inspiring stories of these nominees remind us that innovation and African-led solutions are indeed the answer to Africa’s growth and prosperity,” said Walter Fust, AIF Chairman of the Board.

IPA has seen tremendous growth in applications and increasing interest from both innovators and innovation enablers over the years. To date, IPA has attracted more than 7 500 innovators from 52 African countries, making it a truly Pan African initiative. IPA 2017 edition witnessed a record number of entries from over 2 530 innovators across 48 African countries. The Foundation has supported past winners and nominees with approximately US$ 1 million to move their innovations forward. Due to exposure generated by IPA, past winners have gone on to secure over US$30 million in investments to grow and scale their businesses.

“Over the years, IPA has stimulated impactful and market-oriented innovations aiming at changing lives and transforming Africa. In this sixth edition, we want to promote more investment in home-grown innovations as well as intra-African collaboration and trade to allow the scaling up of viable innovations across borders.

“We’re excited for the opportunity to work with our partners to ensure the innovations of the 10 nominees will be available to African markets and beyond. We invite you to join us and unlock the potential of African innovators, starting by investing in these 10 nominees,” said Pauline Mujawamariya Koelbl, IPA Director.

AIF will host the IPA 2017 awards ceremony and its second Innovation Ecosystems Connector on 17 and 18 July in Accra, Ghana. The event will focus on how innovation enablers and businesses can leverage funding streams, investments and resources that are critical to unlock potential of African innovators.

Participants at the IPA Awards will get an opportunity to attend the official opening of IPA 2017, experience the innovation marketplace, join high-level roundtable discussions, Zua Hub meet-ups, and networking activities, ending with a celebration of African ingenuity when the IPA 2017 winners will be announced.

This premier innovation event will be hosted in collaboration with the Government of Ghana, represented by the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation (MESTI), Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC), and Ghana 60 Years On Planning Committee.

The IPA has received the highest endorsement from H.E. President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the President of Ghana, who will deliver the keynote address during the Awards ceremony.

Other nominees are Peris Bosire from Kenya, Nokwethu Khojane from South Africa, Nzola Swasisa from DR Congo, Badr Idriss from Morocco, Aly El-Shafei from Egypt, Dougbeh-Chris Nyan from Liberia, Gift Gana from Zimbabwe, and Philippa Ngaju Makobore from Uganda.