JOHANNESBURG, 28 October 2026 — Four innovators from Kenya, Niger and South Africa are preparing to compete in the Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation final today, with technologies addressing cardiac screening, patient monitoring, rural dialysis and nutrient recovery from urine.
The Royal Academy of Engineering’s programme schedules the event for 17:30 South Africa Standard Time, or 18:30 East Africa Time. The winner is due to receive £50,000, while the other three finalists will each receive £10,000. This is a preview of the final and the projects behind it; the competition outcome remains ahead.
They are Alice Muhuhu of Kenya with MoyoECG, Mamane Kabirou Ousseini of Niger with Likita Care, Naom Monari of Kenya with Renal Roads and Dyllon Randall of South Africa with Pee-Cycling. Their projects address healthcare access and resource recovery, with wider adoption depending on financing, maintenance and appropriate approvals.
What the prize supports
The official final page identifies the four finalists and the announced awards. A separate £5,000 One-to-Watch prize will be decided by an audience vote among the remaining shortlisted innovators.
The competition follows eight months of training and mentoring. Its purpose is to help entrepreneurs commercialise engineering solutions, bringing business development alongside the technology itself.
Prize money should be distinguished from the cost of a full expansion programme. An award can support a business, but the announced sum does not establish that a factory, clinical network or national service is fully financed. Nor does selection establish regulatory approval or prove every performance claim made for an innovation.
Alice Muhuhu: cardiac screening closer to patients
Kenyan doctor Alice Muhuhu founded Aurora Health Systems, the business behind MoyoECG. The organiser’s project profile describes a portable electrocardiogram platform that captures electrical signals from the heart and uses software to assist healthcare workers with interpretation and referrals.
The intended setting is a clinic with limited access to specialist cardiac services or reliable connectivity. Bringing screening to that setting could change where a patient’s assessment begins, while referral and clinical care remain essential parts of the service.
TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION
Africa Prize 2026: Four Finalists and the Path to Wider Use
Oct 28, 2026
Oct 28, 2026
5 min read
Published
Updated:
JOHANNESBURG, 28 October 2026 — Four innovators from Kenya, Niger and South Africa are preparing to compete in the Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation final today, with technologies addressing cardiac screening, patient monitoring, rural dialysis and nutrient recovery from urine.
The Royal Academy of Engineering’s programme schedules the event for 17:30 South Africa Standard Time, or 18:30 East Africa Time. The winner is due to receive £50,000, while the other three finalists will each receive £10,000. This is a preview of the final and the projects behind it; the competition outcome remains ahead.
They are Alice Muhuhu of Kenya with MoyoECG, Mamane Kabirou Ousseini of Niger with Likita Care, Naom Monari of Kenya with Renal Roads and Dyllon Randall of South Africa with Pee-Cycling. Their projects address healthcare access and resource recovery, with wider adoption depending on financing, maintenance and appropriate approvals.
What the prize supports
The official final page identifies the four finalists and the announced awards. A separate £5,000 One-to-Watch prize will be decided by an audience vote among the remaining shortlisted innovators.
The competition follows eight months of training and mentoring. Its purpose is to help entrepreneurs commercialise engineering solutions, bringing business development alongside the technology itself.
Prize money should be distinguished from the cost of a full expansion programme. An award can support a business, but the announced sum does not establish that a factory, clinical network or national service is fully financed. Nor does selection establish regulatory approval or prove every performance claim made for an innovation.
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Alice Muhuhu: cardiac screening closer to patients
Kenyan doctor Alice Muhuhu founded Aurora Health Systems, the business behind MoyoECG. The organiser’s project profile describes a portable electrocardiogram platform that captures electrical signals from the heart and uses software to assist healthcare workers with interpretation and referrals.
The intended setting is a clinic with limited access to specialist cardiac services or reliable connectivity. Bringing screening to that setting could change where a patient’s assessment begins, while referral and clinical care remain essential parts of the service.
The Academy says the team aims to secure regulatory approvals, strengthen intellectual-property protection and expand deployment. Those are continuing objectives. A proposed network of more than 200 facilities should therefore be read as an expansion plan, rather than an achieved installation count.
Mamane Kabirou Ousseini: equipment made and maintained in Niger
Likita Care’s finalist profile describes an integrated medical-monitoring system developed in Niger by Mamane Kabirou Ousseini and co-founder Seydou Gnaly Ousmane. It combines hardware, clinical software and local fabrication.
The proposition extends beyond selling a device. Training, installation and maintenance are part of the delivery model, addressing the problem of equipment becoming unusable when parts or technical support are difficult to obtain.
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The Academy reports that more than 70 monitoring units have been produced and deployed, with five medical centres using the system. These are organiser-reported deployment figures, rather than an independently audited national total. The stated next step is consolidation in Niger before expansion into neighbouring markets.
For wider adoption, the useful measures include equipment uptime, repair turnaround, affordability and documented clinical performance. A purchase order and a device remaining reliably in service describe different stages of progress.
Naom Monari: taking dialysis beyond fixed centres
Kenyan nurse and entrepreneur Naom Monari’s Renal Roads project brings a dialysis clinic into a repurposed 40-foot shipping container mounted on a trailer. The Academy describes four dialysis machines, water treatment, plumbing, drainage, solar power and backup systems.
The innovation is the mobile configuration and service model, rather than a claim that the dialysis machines themselves were newly invented. The unit rotates between communities and operates from local government health facilities, according to the project profile.
This makes the operating arrangements as important as the vehicle: treatment schedules, trained staff, purified water, clinical oversight and reliable reimbursement all affect whether patients can continue receiving care. Wider coverage will require those systems to grow with the equipment.
Dyllon Randall: turning a waste stream into useful products
South African engineer Dyllon Randall co-founded Pee-Cycling with Caitlin Courtney. The Academy’s description explains a system that stabilises urine and uses pretreatment and reverse osmosis to produce concentrated liquid fertiliser and reusable water.
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There is a documented deployment beyond the competition stage. In a 30 September report, the University of Cape Town described collection at Cape Town’s DHL Stadium through a Bidvest partnership. It reported 2,700 and 3,600 litres collected at two sporting events.
Those quantities describe urine collected on specific occasions, not daily fertiliser production or sales. They nevertheless illustrate a practical issue for scale: securing a dependable collection stream and arrangements to move, process and use it.
The next test is sustained use
Across the four projects, engineering is being adapted to the conditions in which people need a service: limited specialist access, difficult maintenance, distance from treatment or wasteful resource flows.
XTRAfrica’s earlier coverage of municipal innovation in South Africa examines a related challenge: connecting technology with public-service delivery.
The Academy’s online event programme lists a 17:30–20:30 SAST session, with timings subject to change. Readers can follow its registration information for online attendance.
The confirmed award result will identify this year’s winner. The longer test will be whether the support produces additional installations, dependable services, affordable access and documented outcomes for the people the technologies are designed to serve.
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