{"id":16813,"date":"2020-05-26T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-26T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.engineernewsnetwork.com\/blog\/?p=16813"},"modified":"2020-05-22T17:13:59","modified_gmt":"2020-05-22T16:13:59","slug":"covid-19-supporting-engineering-to-fight-disease-in-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.engineernewsnetwork.com\/blog\/covid-19-supporting-engineering-to-fight-disease-in-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"COVID-19: supporting engineering to fight disease in Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Five female entrepreneurs are combining their engineering and business skills in the fight against COVID-19 in sub-Saharan Africa thanks to funding from the <strong><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.raeng.org.uk\/policy\/engineering-response-covid-19-coronavirus\" target=\"_blank\">Royal Academy of Engineering<\/a><\/strong> through its Project CARE (COVID Africa Rapid Entrepreneurs) initiative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Project CARE is an international collaboration of academic, health and funding bodies in the UK and engineering entrepreneurs in Africa.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Just over a month after it started, the programme is already helping local engineers to deliver products and services needed in the fight against COVID-19 in Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Project CARE was initiated by the Royal Academy of Engineering in early April as it became clear that the virulence and rapid transmission of COVID-19 could cause widespread infection and loss of life even in countries with robust national healthcare systems like the UK\u2019s.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Academy works extensively with engineers in countries of sub-Saharan Africa, and became concerned that the challenges of COVID-19 could prove extreme in these areas, which have dense urban populations and less well-resourced healthcare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Project CARE aims to deliver several complementary activities. One of these is to support engineering SMEs in sub-Saharan Africa to temporarily pivot or scale-up their businesses to help address the many challenges of COVID-19.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Around 200 current and past recipients of the Academy\u2019s Africa Prize and Leaders in Innovation Fellowships programmes were invited to apply for funding last month. Some 53 applications were received and eight entrepreneurs, including five women, were successful.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Each has received \u00a35,000 to support them in pivoting or scaling up their current business model:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Catherine Wanjoya \u2013 Slimlak Agencies \u2013 Kenya:\u00a0Incinerators to safely dispose of used PPE on-site.<\/li><li>Josephine Marie Godwyll \u2013 Lab &amp; Library on Wheels \u2013 Ghana:\u00a0 Ananse@Home STEM and art home-schooling app for children aged 8\u201314.<\/li><li>Chinenye Justin Nwaogwugwu \u2013 Macjames Global Resources Limited \u2013 Nigeria: Manufacture of MACJAMES HandSafe instant hand sanitiser with moisturiser, that meets WHO standards.<\/li><li>Osewe Collince Oluoch \u2013 ChanjoPlus \u2013 Kenya: USSD platform for real-time contact-tracing and to disseminate health information.<\/li><li>Frida Njogu-Ndongwe \u2013 Afyakit \u2013 Kenya: Timely, actionable data-driven insights on the readiness of health facilities to provide critical services.<\/li><li>Victor Boyle-Komolafe \u2013 GIVO (Garbage In, Value Out) \u2013 Nigeria: Production of affordable WHO-standard face shields from recycled PET bottles.<\/li><li>Linah Pununu Maphanga \u2013 Farmers Assistant \u2013 South Africa: Connecting smallholder farmers with local consumers, repairing informal supply chains.<\/li><li>Aishat Raheem \u2013 Farmz2U \u2013 Nigeria: Supporting farmers with data-driven insights to increase production and online distribution channels to increase sales.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Further activities are planned to support these individuals in addition to funding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Dr Hayaatun Sillem, Chief Executive of the Royal Academy of Engineering, said: \u201cThe outlook for many African countries is very concerning.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cAlongside the medical professionals who risk their lives daily to do battle with this virus, engineers have important roles to play in managing and mitigating the impacts of the disease.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cAs with the Academy\u2019s other work in response to the coronavirus outbreak, our goal for Project CARE is to marshal the knowledge and expertise of our Fellows and wider network of engineers to enhance the response to COVID-19, in this case supporting our network of motivated and talented young engineering entrepreneurs in sub-Saharan Africa to apply their skills to the challenge.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe do this not just for the immediate benefit of nations in Africa but for the benefit of the global community of engineers, so that together we can develop more efficient and effective ways of helping to tackle this pandemic and build our resilience to future threats.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The launch of Project CARE is made possible through philanthropic funding, donations of manufacturing equipment and consumables, and the support of teams of volunteers with the appropriate expert knowledge.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Additional funding is also being made available from the Academy\u2019s Global Challenges Research Fund allocation. It is hoped that Project CARE will be able to scale up its impact by inviting more manufacturers and other partners to participate and further announcements will be made as plans are implemented.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Five female entrepreneurs are combining their engineering and business skills in the fight against COVID-19 in sub-Saharan Africa thanks to funding from the Royal Academy of Engineering through its Project CARE (COVID Africa Rapid Entrepreneurs) initiative. Project CARE is an international collaboration of academic, health and funding bodies in the UK and engineering entrepreneurs in &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[199],"tags":[8328,7948,8327,3250],"class_list":["post-16813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","","category-news-views-and-opinion","tag-africa","tag-covid-19","tag-project-care","tag-royal-academy-of-engineering"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>COVID-19: supporting engineering to fight disease in Africa - Engineer News Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Female engineering entrepreneurs leading the way as first projects funded\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.engineernewsnetwork.com\/blog\/covid-19-supporting-engineering-to-fight-disease-in-africa\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"COVID-19: supporting engineering to fight disease in Africa - 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