The young innovators who flew Tz flag high

Confidence is a great weapon in life, if you want to succeed and accomplish your goals.

People normally say: “Do not degrade anyone, simply because you never know what the future holds.” This means one should not judge a book by its cover.

That was the statement from a group of five young innovators from Kitunda Nyantila located in the outskirts of Ilala municipality in Dar es Salaam. They emerged the winners in the World Bank’s Young Innovators Competition after being discouraged by others.

On November 15 last year, five boys who won the prizes traveled from Dar es Salaam to Barcelona (Spain) to participate in the tough competition.

They managed to showcase to the world that Tanzania has got young innovators who are able to design various things. The five winners, who are the founders of Stamwa Technology and Innovation Centre Labs (Sticlab), received their prizes in Barcelona on November 17.

Last month was happiest for Sticlab after its innovation Water Vending Machine Pre-Paid impressed panel of judges from across the world who did not hesitate to declare them winners of the World Bank Negawatt Challenge First Phase Competition.

Negawatt Challenge is a global initiative designed by World Bank in empowering communities to spread innovations around local energy and water challenges and transform cities to be more sustainable.

In April last year, the World Bank sent invitations to various institutions and universities asking them to participate in the competition but for these five winners were invited through Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology (Costech).

The World Bank set three criteria, including first; the contestants must be in a group of five to six young innovators, second is that their idea should state how they can solve critical problems affecting water and energy sectors, and the third is a statement on how ideas can be translated into actions. Their ideas must be tested on the ground.

In the same month, over 80 people from various universities, colleges and institutions that were divided into groups of five and six met at Costech for the first screening and demonstration of their ideas as well as undergoing training on how to present their ideas.

Sticlab team leader, Valeria Sanga told Success recently that after the judges completed the exercise of screening 10 groups, three groups, including them had remained at the University of Dar es Salaam’s College of Information Technology (UDCIT) for further training.

After a long training and demonstration of their machine, their group became the winner and was selected to join other four groups of young innovators from Accra-Ghana, Rio de Janeiro-Brazil and Nairobi-Kenya.

Mr Stanley Mwalembe, who is a lecturer at the Dar es Salaam Institute Technology (DIT), managed to meet the boys and shared with them his idea of producing water vending machine.

They started implementation of the project at DIT while still pursuing a bachelor??s degree.

According to Mr Sanga, after graduating, they started their company and he became the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) while the rest became directors. In year 2013, they started making the vending machine and completed in 2014.

For the first time last year, they participated in Saba Saba exhibitions under Vocational Educational and Training Authority (VETA) where their journey of success started. In the beginning they were six but one left.

The machine is designed to help the community to overcome revenue collection, loss of water and provide employment to the youth.

The pre-paid water metering system can be operated in two modes; as a point of sale, which can either offer mobile money or coin based payment and as a household pre-paid meter, which offers mobile money payment.

A survey that was conducted in Dar es Salaam indicated that both sellers and buyers complain over water service. The sellers said they had no data on production and consumption, water leakages and inaccurate water bills.

He said currently the machine is selling water by bucket but they are in the last stage of transforming it to work for those selling water from trucks and boreholes as well so as to transform the machines to start buying water by using notes.

The buyers responded that sometimes they miss sellers at water points.

The machine is designed in form of a juke box whereby in order for customer to get service, one must enter coin depending on the price of water as set by the seller which is easy to use and theft proof.

The machine is fully automated, solar powered so it can be used in areas without electricity and is user friendly.

Mr Sanga said a vendor can fix the machine at any of his water source such as a well or tank and customers can insert coins for the amount of water they need and has the ability to sense fake currency and tokens.

“This technology can help vendors save time and continue with other development activities while customers attend to themselves instead of staying at one point all the time,” he said.

According to him, they can produce five machines per week, adding that they have already served three customers and received over 28 customers’ orders. He said they are selling each machine for Sh800, 000 but can also rent it out for Sh35, 000 per month since some people cannot afford to buy it.

He said the group plans to produce 4000 machines in two years, building production facilities, expanding product development team and increasing sales people.

Christian Brighton who is the group’s technical and operation officer said people sabotaged the machine as they received complaints from two customers because someone cut a shell of orange like coin of Sh100 and entered into meter, which interfered with the machine’s operation.

“As we told you this machine is designed to control theft and now they’re no possibility of having it, so others are doing anything to sabotage us,” he said

He said another customer their children put sheets of paper that blocked the system.

Despite the number of challenges, some of clients like the machine and others requested that they station more of such around public toilets as well.

“On the first day when we arrived in Spain, groups from Ghana and Brazil tried to discourage us and said we can’t but we didn’t lose hope because we were confident of our innovation and how it’s important to the society,” said Mr Brighton

“Sometimes my colleagues were afraid since the guys from Brazil were already working on major industries. They were also afraid of guys from Kenya and Ghana because are they are good in English language”

He said they won because their idea is already in the market and they met the World Bank criteria of how the idea can be used to solve local problems.

He said the other from Kenya, Ghana and Brazil presented innovations on energy while theirs was on both energy and water. In the competition, they received a certificate and a trophy.

Mr Mwalembe said he was assured the team would come back with the trophy because he knows them and their ability. He decided to work with young people since he is about to retire so some people must remain to train others.

“This people have the passion to work, I can say we share the same interest. I knew they would win because it many competitions, we participated in the country and emerged victorious so that helped me be confident,” he said.

He called upon the government to support young innovators because they have the ability to design a number of things.

but most of them have no funds and their innovation is not given priority.

So far they have received a call from Kenya asking them to write a proposal on how the machine be used in Kibera slums.