Nairobi’s annual ASME Innovation Showcase selected seven startups as finalists
The esteemed international accelerator of hardware-led social innovation, the 2024 ASME Innovation Showcase (ISHOW), has chosen seven African startups as finalists.
Each year on June 19, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) hosts the International Symposium on Heat Exchange (ISHOW) in Nairobi, Kenya.
The finalists will compete for a portion of US $30,000 in grant awards and technical support to help bring their game-changing inventions to market. Their ideas address problems in the areas of agriculture, building, energy, healthcare, transportation, and waste management. Their ideas offer low-cost, environmentally friendly hardware technology solutions.
These include the Kenyan businesses Megagas Alternative Energy Enterprise and Adumu, which have created institutional cooking systems powered by biodiesel and clean cooking gas respectively. Neosave Technologies, which makes a wearable medical device that allows clinicians to continuously monitor sick newborns admitted to care, and Che Innovations, which has created a warming device to prevent neonatal hypothermia during ambulance transportation, are Uganda’s representatives.
The following companies were also chosen: Yaaka Investment of Zambia; MeSADA of Ghana; Afya Lead of Tanzania; and Yaaka Lead of Ghana, which developed a patented, non-invasive, and reasonably priced device to treat postpartum hemorrhage (PPH). Yaaka Lead also produced a five-row staple grain precision seeder.