Makerere University’s star has once again shone bright at the 2017-2018 Big Ideas Competition as Nine innovations made it to the list of the Seventy of the most promising ideas chosen to advance to the final round. The news which was revealed by the ResilientAfrica Network (RAN) Chief of Party and Deputy Vice Chancellor (Finance & Administration)-DVCFA, Prof. William Bazeyo, shows the advancing innovations falling in the categories of; Food Systems, Global Health and Scaling Up Big Ideas.

Moving forward, these students are supposed to complete and submit full proposals (10 pages) to the Big Ideas Team. The students will also closely work with Mentors allocated to them by the Big Ideas Team (some of which are RAN Staff who volunteer their time and expertise). These proposals will be evaluated to inform the list of actual winners who will be publicly announced. The winners will then receive a congratulatory email notification also requesting them to share Bank Account Details for the grant transfer.

“We are reaching out to the students who have not yet reached out to us so that we can further offer them support towards cleaning up and submitting their full proposals,” added Ms. Harriet Adong, RAN’s Communication Manager.

Please click here to access the full list of the Innovations advancing to the Final Round. The advancing Makerere Innovations along with a brief description of each category are listed below.

2017-2018 Big Ideas Finalist Summaries

FOOD SYSTEMS
The aim of this category is to encourage the development of innovative solutions or approaches that address challenges in food systems, or that will result in progress or changes to support food security, sustainability and/or justice and health in food systems, and/or equitable access to nutritious food. Proposals may be aimed at campus based program, local/domestic issues or international efforts.

• Livestock Disease Diagnosis Kit (LIDDIA)
• PesT Tester
• Teleeka
• TRAM project

GLOBAL HEALTH
The challenge for this category is to describe an action-oriented, inter-disciplinary project that would help alleviate a health concern among low-resource communities. Proposals submitted to this category should a) demonstrate an evidence of a widespread health concern faced by U.S. or international low-income populations or low-resource communities, and b) develop a system, plan, or technology that addresses this problem that is both culturally appropriate within the target communities, and appropriate for low-resource settings.

• Coordinated Emergency Response System (CERS)
• Ecosmart pads
• LUMENDA
• Oxygen Splitters

SCALING UP BIG IDEAS
The challenge for this category is for previous Big Ideas award winners to (1) highlight key achievements or progress made in implementing their original winning project idea, (2) document lessons learned in initial implementation, and (3) describe plans to revise their venture’s design or scale up their model. For the purposes of this category, Scaling Up is defined as reaching a new geographic area or underserved population, or adding to the scope and/or services of the original project in the same geographic area.

• Early Preeclampsia Detection (EPED) Strip