If Museveni wants to bet on winners, here’s a list for him

A few days ago, the 2017 edition of the Innovation Showcase took place in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. The Innovation Showcase is a global competition for what its organisers describe as “hardware-led social innovation”. The money you get, and it can be a pretty sum, is to enable you take your product, which will have a social impact, to the market. It has evolved to be organised in countries, regions, or continents. For the Africa one, there were 10 finalists: Four Ugandans; four Kenyans; a Tanzanian, and; a Ghanaian.
These are the Ugandan four:

1. Kamata: This is a solution developed by electrical engineer Eddie Aijuka to foil electricity theft. The device is installed on the outside of the metre box to measure constant electricity flow. If any sort of disruption in electricity flow is detected, Kamata will shut off the power and alert Umeme. A disruption in electricity flow to the metre could suggest that someone has gone around or tampered with the metre, in order to steal electricity. Only Umeme can restore the electricity again after Kamata has cut it off.

2. The second one is the “Vein Locator”, developed by Emmanuel Muhire. We learn that 80 per cent of patients admitted to hospital need that intravenous thingy to deliver fluids, medicine or for withdrawing blood. However, because many patients are either little babies, old, a bit too fat, or their complexion makes it hard, doctors and nurses struggle to find a vein beneath their skin. Muhire’s device is a portable, non-invasive innovation that helps medicine people locate veins in difficult patients.

3. The third innovation, Matibabu, was from Brian Gitta. In short, it is a mobile app that can diagnose malaria without pricking the body. It works with a matiscope – a finger clamp or grip with an in-built infrared light and sensor that is attached to the phone. It detects whether you have malaria through your skin.

4. The fourth one, Purifaaya, was an idea by Kathy Ku, an American student who came up with it while she was teaching in Uganda. It is an inexpensive ceramic water filter made from local materials in the country. It’s made mostly of a mixture of clay and sawdust. When fired, the result is a filter that allows water, but not bacteria, through. We said it was inexpensive. It costs $20 (Sh72,000), which on the face of it, would be a lot of money for a small Ugandan worker. However, it lasts two years, so the cost is really peanuts when you spread it over that period.

There are many conclusions we can make here. For starters, and that I will never tire of repeating, is one that I first heard from former Kenya Permanent Secretary in the Information and Communication ministry Bitange Ndemo at a technology conference. He said Africa had many problems, yes, but if you looked and thought hard, they were also all opportunities. They offered innovators problems which they could come up with solutions for. Secondly, that not all young people are trying to make the next big dating or photo-sharing app. A lot of them are down to earth dealing with life-threatening boring issues, like stopping electricity theft, helping catch malaria, and providing safe and clean drinking water.

By the same token, it all reveals how much we are still bogged down with solving the most basic of problems. This is not the first time where young Ugandan creative minds are tied in with their Kenyan counterparts in an innovation race. Remarkable, because for various reasons, the Kenyans tend to be ahead of the game in these things in Africa.

Nearly these innovators are looking for social enterprise funding, all of it from outside Uganda, to grow their ideas. It raises the question of what institutions in Uganda they can turn to. I am told, none.

Now here is suggestion for President Yoweri Museveni. He has been spending time in recent months on “model” farms, hanging water bottles to demonstrate some rudimentary form of irrigation. The President has, in the past, also gone around the country, with his staff following him, weighed down with sacks of money – or bags stuffed with dollars – that he dishes out to a few deserving old men and women, but mostly undeserving opportunists.

Here is a suggestion for him. He should take a chance on these innovators. He should get a list of all these Ugandans who have done clever things and call them to a meeting in Namboole. He would arrive with his usual sacks of money, they line up (after ensuring there are no flukers, of course), and dish out to them envelopes stuffed with dollars. No middlemen or women. It’s certainly a better way to spend the money than doling it out at a makeshift car cash.

Onyango-Obbo is the publisher of Africa data visualiser Africapedia.com and explainer site Roguechiefs.com. Twitter@cobbo3