Ugandan innovation wins UGX70m engineering prize

Peter 14th Jun, 2024 Industry Business Edge Reporter
Ugandan innovation wins UGX70m engineering prize

Mr. Tumusiime and his friends launched the app in 2019 and has since won several awards and grants.


An innovation by Mr. Martin Tumusiime and his friends has won 15,000 British Pounds (about UGX70 million) from the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Prize for Innovation, at a ceremony held in Nairobi yesterday.

Yo-Waste is a location-based mobile application that connects homes and businesses to independent agents for efficient on-demand garbage collection, which currently serves over 1,500 customers including homes, businesses, and waste collection agents, with a goal to reach 20,000 users by 2026.

Founded in 2019 by five Makerere University Computer Science students (Tumusiime, Gideon Mpungu, Lubowa Enock, Namuli Brenda and Rogers Kibuule), Yo-Waste currently helps to collect more than 50 tonnes of garbage daily by more than 40 partner collectors.

  • Yo-Waste narrowly missed out on the top prize of 50,000 British Pounds, which was won by Kenya’s Esther Kimani for her innovation of an early crop pest and disease detection device, which has been credited for reducing crop losses for smallholder farmers by up to 30% while increasing yields by as much as 40%.

Kimani's innovation not only provides real-time alerts within five seconds of an infestation, offering tailored intervention suggestions, but also alerts government agricultural officers to the presence of diseases or pests, contributing to broader agricultural management efforts.

The solar-powered tool uses computer vision algorithms and advanced machine learning to detect and identify crop pests, pathogens or diseases, as well as the nature of the infection or infestation. The device then notifies the farmer via SMS.

  • The annual Africa Prize was founded by the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2014 to support innovators developing sustainable and scalable engineering solutions to local challenges in Africa.

The other winners were Kenya’s Eco Tiles, an environmentally friendly roofing material made from recycled plastic, and Ivory Coast’s La Ruche Health, an app that connects communities to vital health information, advice, and services through “Kiko”, an AI chatbot tool available on WhatsApp and mobile apps.

The Royal Academy picks out scalable engineering solutions designed to solve local challenges and tackling the greatest global challenges while improving economic prosperity and sustainable development for Africa through engineering.

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