STEM startups hold key to solving Africa’s challenges — Presidential Aide

Dr Wasiu Olanrewaju-Smart, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Inter-Governmental Affairs, says startups driven by STEM hold the key and possess the capacity to solve challenges facing Africa.
Olanrewaju-Smart, a Harvard scholar and Policy Fellow at Quantum Alliance AI, Cambridge, Massachusetts, disclosed this at the AfriVatech iResearch Fellowship Cohort One Grand Pitch for the top seven young research fellows from Nigeria.
A former Egypt’s Minister of Health,Dr Halla Zaid, served as judge with the Presidential aide.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the pitch , held through a webinar on Zoom, brought together innovative young Nigerians,who presented solutions to the continent’s problems through their research work.
The programme, moderated by Dr Moses Ojo and Mr Adewale Aboderin, featured a rigorous and transparent evaluation of seven finalists, who were assessed from their start up projects driven by technology models, particularly AI and Machine Learning models.
The organisers’ criteria for contestants, drawn from major Nigerian universities, included problem identification and relevance, innovation and originality, impact potential, leadership identification, communication and clarity.
One of the contestants, Mercy Sado, presented research work that centred on solutions to the health risks of adulterated honey.
She advocated the use of trusted harvesters, laboratory tests for approval, and the labelling of QR codes and batch numbers on each bottle to enable access to lab-test results.
Also, Tife Kerry, another fellow whose research work was titled “Green Cycle: Organic Fertilizer Production,” spoke on a technology-driven solution that turns agricultural waste into safe fertilizer (as against synthetic fertilizer),while improving public health and climate outcomes.
Kerry, who noted that farmers wanted better yields, healthier soil and reduced input costs, said Nigeria generates millions of tonnes of organic waste annually.
While Sekinah Adegbite of the University of Ibadan pitched on “Closing the Loop: A Digital Continuity Model for Hypertension and Diabetes Care in Nigeria,”
Aminat Adeshiyan presented a research work titled “BioSecured Futures.”
Boluwatife Balogun, who spoke on test strips through his research entitled “Sentisense Africa,” described the work as a decoupled surveillance system and a real-time defence against super bugs, highlighting the challenges of global antimicrobial resistance.
While Tolulope Oladipo presented his research on “Deciding Resistance: A Multimodal AI Framework for Health Surveillance,” Winner Bakati presented “RedBarn Agrihub,” a research-driven demonstration-led model for year-round vegetable production and household adoption.
(NAN)