The global electric bike market was estimated at $16.3 billion in 2017, and is expected to rise to $23.8 billion by 2025. There is high potential for the African governments to set policies that encourage green mobility and the investors are likely to jump into this new booming business sector. It the near future most big car manufacturers such as Volkswagen, Ford are preparing for their biggest move to electric cars, the bike industry is gearing up too.
At least one in ten girls in Sub-Saharan Africa misses school during their menstrual cycle. So, women suffer a lot from this situation, and it affects most of them in the rural area who cannot go to school or afraid to do any other type of work in public during the menstruation period and are forced to isolate themselves. A way to combat this has been using the agricultural waste from banana trunk fibres which is a cost-effective way to make sanitary products.
We all like to do our bit for the environment. We recycle, use kitchen waste to make compost, use reusable shopping bags, etc. These are all done in an attempt to decrease the usage of our planet’s resources and to reduce pollution. However, there might be more than you can do without even setting foot out of your home. When it comes to energy consumption, temperature regulation is one of the highest costs. We heat our homes in winter and cool them in summer.
It is estimated that 844 million people lack access to a clean drinking water service, 2 billion people drink water from a contaminated water source. Each year this leads to an estimated death rate of 502.000 people. Producing clean water is a very intense process that requires a considerable amount of energy and efficient technology to run the water purification process.
About 8.2 million trees were cut down for charcoal in Somalia between 2011 and 2017, globally 50.8 tons of charcoal were produced, with Rwanda ranked at the 73th position with 48,000 tons. Thankfully there are still ways to remedy forest degradation by providing alternative, innovative and clean solutions for fuel - biomass pellets.
In Rwanda, a ‘Pico-hydro’ refers to a power system with a capacity less than 50kW. Their advantage over other power systems is their cost-effectiveness and simplicity, and come in different designs, planning and installation processes. It is an economical source of power that has proven useful in delivering clean energy to some of the world’s poorest and most remote places.
When I was young, like most children in developing countries, never had a chance or dreamed of using a microscope in primary school, even in high school microscope usage was rare yet I was studying science. This is a major challenge for the scientific schools students and lowers the science knowledge transfer. This challenge is not just because the governments are not doing anything but to have enough scientific infrastructure is very expensive. It has an impressive magnification lens up to 140x and weighs just 8 grams.
Whether they are consumed as grains or flour they are always products in high demand in Africa - these being cereals such maize, sorghum, millet and wheat. One of the issues with these widely consumed crops is when people want to grind them and consume them as flour, with most remote areas lacking access to electricity and therefore use expensive fossil fuel to run milling machines.
Better housing is one of the key indicators of the economic development, but most developing countries still have a challenge to secure clean homes for their habitants. Dirt floors are often responsible up to 80 percent of diseases. In most cases, parasites live in soil in form of feces and bacteria that can be contagious by either absorption or a simple contact. EarthEnable has introduced a solution to all those problems.
Clean tech leapfrogging cannot be achieved without researchers, geeks, innovators who are driven with passion to change the world by providing useful technology to easy life. Rwanda is also part of the speedy tech world, improving education and empowering young people to fuel innovation.
Boris Bahire Kabeja