African innovators excelled at this year’s Zayed Sustainability Prize annual awards ceremony on Jan.14th 2019—winning in three out of five categories including; Energy, Food and Global High Schools. The winning innovators were from Tanzania, South Africa, and Rwanda (HQ is based in London).
The prize, which is the UAE’s pioneering global award in sustainability, honored leaders whose work and spirit of enterprise has resulted in working solutions across communities around the world.
With over 2,000 submissions from 130 countries, the highest number of applications came from Africa, which is a testament to the growing role African innovators are playing in global innovation. Their solutions addressed real-life social, environmental, health and economic challenges, as well as reflected the aspirations of a new generation of innovators within a continent that has one of the world’s biggest youth populations.
Tanzania’s Sanku, for its flour fortification machines that equip and incentivize small-scale, local millers to fortify their flour with life-saving nutrients — won in the Food Category.
Bboxx whose HQ is based in London but bases its operation in Rwanda, won in the Energy Category. The company has developed a plug-and-play solar device offering users an on-grid experience in an off-grid setting – a truly transformative solution that is changing hundreds of thousands of lives in Africa.
Finally, The African Leadership Academy won in the Global High Schools Category. Their solution a proposed creation of a water treatment machine called “The Living Machine;” a device they designed to treat greywater for use in greenhouses. The proposed solution also looks to implement solar power that will cut electricity costs and increase savings to fund additional renewable energy projects, across the continent.
They each received USD$600,000 (roughly UGX.2,217,660,000) in prize funds to enhance and develop their existing solution.
Notably, to-date, the Zayed Sustainability Prize has award 66 winners who have directly and indirectly impacted the lives of over 318 million people.[related-posts]
