Five young African innovators from Ethiopia and Senegal now have the chance to display their innovations after nine months of hard work at the CREATIC4AFRICA innovation lab in Spain.
This follows a special event organized by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the Technology Centre for ICTs (CTIC) on ‘Innovation in ICTs – the CREATIC4AFRICA initiative’.
With the help of CREATIC4AFRICA, the innovators came up with several ideas including a mobile-based decision support system to improve child health care (mobile e-health system) by Andualem Workneh (Ethiopia) and telephone-based vehicle security system by Israel Belema Kebede (ethiopia).
Others include application development for mobile money by Mesfin Fikre Woldmariam (Ethiopia), building a social network of communities by Papa Fary Diallo (Senegal) and tracking commodity prices on cellphones by Tinbit Kassahun Hirutu (Ethiopia).
Opoku-Mensah, Director, ICT, Science and Technology Division of ECA, acknowledged the partnership between ECA and the Technology Centre for ICTs (CTIC), which is assisting African youth through ICT.
She went on to congratulate the five saying that they had made Africa proud.
Roberto Paraja, CTIC’s president, thanked ECA, the Spanish Agency for Development and Finland Government for making the project possible.
Eskedar Nega, Programme Officer at the ICT, Science and Technology Division of ECA said, “The ideas that were presented are fantastic and now we need to focus on how to take them forward.”
CREATIC4AFRICA initiative was meant to spur innovation among Africa’s youth by enabling them develop ideas into viable and solution-based applications, working in CTIC’s innovation laboratory in Spain.
It was initiated through a Memorandum of Understanding signed between ECA and CTIC during the Second Science with Africa Conference on Science in June 2010.
