Nigerian born Inventors, their Inventions, Challenges and Opportunities III

Nigerian born Inventors, their Inventions, Challenges and Opportunities III

Last year, precisely, Friday of 29th July and 5th August, 2016, I wrote 2-series article with above caption where I mentioned the innovations made by nine prominent Nigerians. The nine mentioned were tip of the iceberg as the country is blessed with so many innovators and inventors. Inventions can seen at the corner of fabricators, mechanics workshops, research archives of Nigerian universities and other tertiary Institutions of learning. The list of Nigerian inventors can never be exhaustive, so also their challenges as well as the opportunities provided by their works. The opening paragraph of the article started with a quotation;    "Necessity is the mother of invention", a popular adage describing the resultant effect of a difficult situation. Nigerian situation has been so difficult for quite some years now and the positive outcomes of this rather unpalatable condition are the creativity, ingenuity and invention brought out by Nigerians to survive the harsh condition. Ordinarily, Nigerians are naturally gifted with above average level of ingenuity, hard work and perseverance, when added to the prevailing difficult situation the result is multitude of inventors. Uncountable number of inventors scattered in all the nick and crannies of our 36 states and FCT is making me to write more on the subject. It is my hope that one or more industrialists will leverage on the opportunities provided by these inventions, make investment and raise the nation to a higher level of technological breakthrough. The government must create a conducive environment for the investment to happen be sustained,  

Ability to create, innovate and invent cuts across all boundaries such as gender, race, religion and age. It is a natural phenomena, whose development is facilitated by many factors such as necessity, intellectual thinking and concern for development. Nigeria is blessed with these factors and thus, has highest number of innovators in Africa as reported by many media over the years. Adding the list of the innovators to the previous ones are the names of women and men, youth and elderly, highly educated and semi-educated across the nation.

The first in the list is    Nkem Uwaje, a founder of  FutureSoft  Software Resources Limited (Futuresoft), an Information Technology (IT) outfit whose establishment in 2008 was driven by the desire to change Nigeria’s technology space. FutureSoft offers website development, e-commerce and web-portal development, web hosting, corporate branding, online marketing, social media management, as well as e-learning solutions for corporate and educational institution. Similarly, Futuresoft provides IT Security solutions and consultancy services for the public and private sector. The mission of Futuresoft is to provide Information Technology solutions for the African market while ensuring global standards, quality, dedication and integrity. Nkem is refuted to be a guru of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in Africa. She received many awards among the prestigious ones were the Jim Ovia Prize for Software Excellence in Africa and the Etisalat Prize for Innovation for her efforts in improving access to technology in Nigeria and Africa-at large. Others innovation awards won by Nkem were 2013 e-Business Life Amazon of Youth Technology Empowerment Award and  2013 AR-CSR Sustainable Solutions Showcase for the i-Connect Project. Futuresoft is expanding tentacles beyond the boundaries of Nigerian market to other markets in Ghana, South Africa, and Kenya. No doubt, Nkem is moving on top gear, energized by her genuine concern for the low level of IT in Africa and her gender is not an obstacle to her progress. “when it comes to ICT, I don’t do the gender thing to be honest, there are just not enough Africans in the Information technology pipeline. The IT literacy rates here are so low across board that gender does not make much difference. We need better qualified IT people regardless of gender.”  She told Mary Olushoga, Founder, AWP Network during an interview reported  in Mary's blog.

 Still on the IT, another name worth mentioning is Adebunmi Adeniran. She invented NAILANGS, a computer keyboard that permits typing prominent Nigerian languages. The creation of characters for typing Nigerian languages with their complex dialect is certainly a noble effort worth commendation and celebration. So far, NAILANGS  has a multilingual keyboard supports and enables writing in at least twelve Nigerian languages. This innovation promotes Nigerian language and ensures that the languages become relevant and do not become extinct as well as making them easy to learn. The Adeniran innovation was reported by The Guardian of 2nd February, 2016 and was quoted her saying "with NAILANGS keyboard, there is no need to switch from one computer to another because once it is downloaded, one is able to type in English and it can be made a bilingual due to the nature of Nigerians who mostly speak more than a language. With the key, one is able to type the three official languages, Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba and other six populous languages which are Effic, Idoma, Hausa/Fulani, Tiv, among others.” Justifying her effort she said "one of the reasons for her choice of keys is the number of people in a particular ethnic and their passion to speak their dialect, such language is Urhobo people, they are very passionate about writing their language, so I have incorporated their keys, even though they might not be part of the so called most populous languages, because they love to do something with their language.”

The next innovator is Bilikiss Adebiyi. While many consider IT as the hotbed for innovators, Billikiss  left a five-year-long job as a Software Programmer at IBM in the United States to return home to Nigeria and execute an idea that came to her when she was schooling at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She created a recycling outfit called WeCyclers. WeCyclers collects wastes from low-income communities and rewards the participants with points that can later be exchanged for prizes. Lagos was her natural choice for this kind of innovation for obvious reasons; population, filths and water. The generated waste materials – which are also collected with help from the Lagos State Waste Management Authority (LAWMA) – are then sold to recycling companies, making WeCyclers both a social and economic enterprise. Bilikiss innovation is becoming a movement, changing the way Nigerians and Africans view waste. She was reported saying, “Waste management is one of the main problems for poor populations in Nigeria. We want to create a system that would change how people see waste from a problem to a solution.” She is already raising general awareness on the importance of recycling for environmental sustainability and social welfare gained from reduction in pollution and diseases like malaria. The innovation offers convenient household recycling service using a fleet of low-cost cargo bikes. We are powering social change using the environment by allowing people in low-income communities to capture value from their waste.

The next innovator is Yahaya Ahmed, a co founder of Development Association for Renewable Energy (DARE)- Architecture/Eco friendly homes, Nigeria. Eco-friendliness takes an amazing architectural form in plastic bottle houses, constructed by the (DARE) in Nigeria. DARE constructed these homes from thousands of recycled plastic bottles which are filled with sand, cement, and mud. These components form a highly formidable wall which is 20 times stronger than brick walls, fireproof, bulletproof, and earthquake resistant. DARE is a Kaduna-based non-governmental organisation, which seeks to promote the understanding and use of renewable energy resources as well as promote clean indoor air through energy autonomous plastic bottle houses and other environmental projects. The houses are fitted with energy saving stoves with little or no emissions which mitigate desertification and climate change, urine filtration fertilization systems and purification tanks. Yahaya Ahmed’s environmental projects seek to aid Nigeria’s issues with deforestation and pollution, in addition to other forms of environmental degradation. The energy efficient kitchen stoves were recently made available for purchase in Kaduna and plans are in the works for nationwide availability. DARE currently trains young people in Kaduna to assemble the stoves in order for them to become future entrepreneurs. Additionally, the organisation is training local masons in the bottle building technique with the help of Andres Froesse, the founder of Eco-Tec Soluciones Ambientales. (To be continued next week) Click to download the newspaper version