The National Industrial Research and DevelopmentAgency (NIRDA) on Friday awarded young innovators who participated in Innovate forSmart Agro-Processing hackathon; a competition that brought together innovators who came up with innovative ideas around Modern Agro Processing.
The event took place in Kigali at NIRDA STEM forIndustry laboratory.
The selected projects were incubated through NIRDA STEMfor Industry Lab and NIRDA life Sciences laboratory and were turned intotangible projects for three months.During the event to award the best projects in Innovatefor Smart Agro Processing hackathon, innovators exhibited their projects rangingfrom locally made solar powered smart storage to SmartPoultry Farming and master crop to Smart Cooling and storage and to BeesDevelopment.
Speaking during the event, the Director General Dr. Christian Sekomo Birame thanked all participants, especially theawarded teams for their courage and commitment to leverage technology and innovatearound Smart Agro Processing.
“We have seen tangible projects withsmart technology that can address challenges facing our Agro Processing sector,those projects are worth celebrating and we are proud to support these younginnovators,” said Dr. Sekomo.
“We urge the private sector to partnerwith us to support the young innovators whose innovations can help ourindustries to flourish if improved and adapted in different industries,” headded.
Dr. Christian Sekomo Birame
Dr. Sekomo urged the awarded innovatorsto use the acquired skills during the incubation and the cash prizes to improvetheir respective projects and put them to another level. “As NIRDA, we will keep working hard tosupport such innovations, we will also keep following up to ensure that theawarded projects grow and don’t stop here,” he added.
Prince Chris Mazimpaka one of the young innovatorsfrom DODI group whose Smart Poultry Farming System project lauded NIRDA’sinitiative to incubate young innovators and help them turn their ideas intotangible projects. “I extend our heartfelt appreciation.
Hadn’t it beenNIRDA to help us turn our ideas into prototypes and projects, we would not have managed to come up with such technology by leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI), big data and machine learning.
We now have projectsthat we can now improve and take them to the market,” he said. “By shaping young innovators, we are ready to expandour business and help create jobs for the youth, thanks to NIRDA, we alsoacquired business advisory services, marketing and intellectual propertytraining among others, this package will serve us shield, insuring that ourhard work and creativity are duly recognized and rewarded, even beyond incubation,”he added.
The innovation for Smart Agro Processing hachathon isnot the first one to be organized by NIRDA. In fact, it is the third organized overthe past four years. Others were Innovate for Industry hackathon andInnovate for Cow Bio hackathon.
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