African innovators
From Malawi’s William Kamkwamba to Burkina Faso’s Safiatou Nana, for years young Africans have been coming up with novel, inspired innovations to make the lives of their countrymen better. In our new series, ‘African Innovators’, we focus on some of these ingenious inventors and their groundbreaking inventions.
David Gathu and Moses Kinyua are two young Kenyan engineers and inventors who are tackling a wide array of issues with their innovations—from security, to limb loss, to the Coronavirus. Previously engineering students at a local university, Gathu and Kinyua both had to drop out due to financial difficulty. These two innovators did not let this stop them though, instead continuing to self-study and improve their engineering skills to become self-taught engineers and technological innovators.
Their two most exciting innovations are a bio-robotic prosthetic arm and a COVID-19 decontamination device.
Their robotic prosthetic arm, which is controlled by brain signals, was invented to help upper-limb amputees.
“We designed this bio-robotic hand,” says Gathu, “to aid people who have lost the use of their limbs in their daily activities, for them to go from dependent people to independent people.”
The bio-robotic arm includes a skullcap, which is fitted to the wearer’s head. The cap converts the wearer’s brain signals to electric signals, which are then relayed to the arm for according movements. In a video, the young Kenyans show how the arm carefully helps the wearer to take a sip of water from a bottle. Futuristic and Sci-Fi-esque it may seem, but these two innovators may truly have created something which, with much-needed funding, could be developed and mass-produced to make an incredible difference to the lives of upper-limb amputees in Kenya and the continent at large.
Gathu and Kinyua’s most recent invention, a decontamination device designed to disinfect surfaces and spaces that are contaminated with the Coronavirus, came about, says Kinyua, when the virus hit Kenya and they realized they could create a machine that could decontaminate surfaces. Quite simply, the device oxidizes oxygen molecules and converts them into ozone, a chemical compound which acts as a strong disinfectant.
Gathu and Kinyua’s makeshift workshop in Kikuyu, north of Nairobi, is a testament to their resourcefulness. With very little resources (for example, their prototype of the bio-robotic prosthetic arm is made of an array of found materials, including recycled wood!), they are at the forefront of human imagination and innovation.
Words by Illona Meyer
