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The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) has announced the regional ventures for the 2025 ASME Innovation Showcase (ISHOW), the prestigious international accelerator of hardware-led social innovation.
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Eight social ventures from throughout Africa will pitch their innovative solutions and participate in an extensive design and engineering review with industry experts online beginning Tuesday, June 10. These eight ventures will vie for three spots in the 2025 ISHOW cohort, offering a share of grant awards and technical support to help bring their impactful innovations to market. The virtual awards ceremony takes place Wednesday, June 18, at 7 p.m. Eastern Africa Time. Register here.
The ISHOW Africa ventures’ innovations provide affordable, sustainable hardware technology solutions to agricultural, energy, healthcare, and transportation challenges. They are:
- Agrivovle Limited (Nairobi, Kenya) for its “Agrivolve Balcony Units” –compact, self-watering vertical farming systems designed for urban households, enabling users to grow fresh, chemical-free vegetables at home
- Baini Technologies Limited (Kampala, Uganda) for its “HemoSave Device” – a solution that offers real-time and accurate quantification of maternal blood loss during cesarean section births, enabling healthcare providers to detect postpartum hemorrhage early and administer life-saving treatments
- CIST East Africa Industries Limited (Kisumu, Kenya) for its “CIST-Second Generation Bioethanol Fuel Micro Distillery System” – a solution capable of converting waste cellulose biomass including sugar cane bagasse and water hyacinth into 95% ethanol, blended and stabilized as a cooking fuel and transport energy
- GreenWize EV (Nairobi, Kenya) for its “GreenWize EV” – a solution to convert end-of-life internal combustion engine motorbikes into eco-friendly EV motorbikes through a system for battery swapping and open infrastructure for hybrid solar-powered fast charging
- H2Energies (Rusape, Zimbabwe) for its “Hydrostove 1.0” – a solution using water and solar power to produce hydrogen gas as an affordable, clean cooking fuel for hard-to-reach rural communities, intended to reduce indoor air pollution and deforestation
- I-Dress (at CAMTech Uganda-Mbarar, a University of Science and Technology) for its “I-Dress” solution – an affordable, sterile wound dressing made from gauze infused with honey and olive oil, designed to prevent infection and accelerate healing for post-cesarean wounds in low-resource settings
- MariTest Africa (Kampala, Uganda) for its “MariTest” – a non-invasive, AI-powered diagnostic device for rapid malaria detection and monitoring, designed for frontline health workers in remote settings without access to lab facilities
- TFS Cargo Bicycles (Benin City, Nigeria) for its “SunHaul Bike” – a solar-powered, electric-assisted cargo bicycle designed for navigating rough rural terrains and equipped with a heat pump for cooling or drying farm produce and a solar tracker for optimized charging on the move.
