Land Of A Thousand IDEAS
AS COUNTRIES RELENTLESSLY DIP INTO their depleting arsenal to creatively respond to the raging pandemic as also deploy new ideas to tackle it, in many ways, Covid-19 has been Africa’s ‘light bulb’ moment.
The new wave of innovations on the continent has seen governments, universities, corporates and small business rally together to come up with rejigged solutions and find effective ways to combat the crisis. In Rwanda, the ‘land of a thousand hills’ known for its tech startups and encouragement of new enterprise, a raft of new ideas are emerging, from clever face masks to ventilator machines, and food delivery apps to contact tracing apps and robots. We examine a few:
Drones as loudspeakers?
With 30 employees and operating in six different countries in Africa, Eric Rutayisire’s drone company, Charis UAS, has worked on a number of projects in Rwanda, including spraying pesticides using drones on sites to quell mosquito breeding and malaria.
However, some of these projects came to a screeching halt when Covid-19 struck.
“Certain projects that were meant to kick off had to be stopped and we lost some revenue,” Rutayisire tells FORBES AFRICA.
The CEO says that he and his team had to quickly come up with an innovative way of joining the fight against the pandemic. They saw an opportunity to improve communication systems during
