By Kemo Cham
This year`s innovation award by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has been won by an amputee.
The ‘Youth Innovation Award (YIA)’, the brainchild of the UN agency, is designed to promote innovation and new technology for development initiatives, as well as provide concrete solutions for sustainable development. It is held every year during the United Nations Week in 27-28 September, under the tag Social Good Summit.
Archippus T. Sesay was named out of 750 people across Sierra Leone who participated in the competition.
He was finally named this week from among 11 other young people who had been pre-selected by a panel of judges which comprised Prof. A.B. Karim, Dean of Pure and Applied Sciences at Fourah Bay College, Josephine Koroma, Deputy Executive Director, Network Movement for Justice and Development representing civil society, Aminata Sillah, Deputy Commissioner of the National Youth Commission, and Moses Sichei, UNDP’s Senior Economist.
The UNDP, in a statement, said Sesay won with his idea of building an artificial limb, called prosthetics, for amputees, made out of local and discarded materials. He went home with $2,000 as prize money.
Sesay said his work will be affordable to the amputees, most of whom cannot afford imported ones.
“The thought of seeing colleague’s amputees in that state of neglect motivated me to look for a solution using local materials to create artificial limbs. The cost of my artificial limbs is 10 times cheaper than the imported ones and is just as durable as the imported ones,” the single-leg amputee from Makeni, Northern Region of Sierra Leone, was quoted in the statement as saying after receiving his prize.
Jasonta Coker, 18, and Bockarie Marah, a final year student at Njala University, were named as joint runners-up. Jasonta created briquettes from biomass to serve as substitute to charcoal and firewood, while Bockarie constructed an Electronic AC Generator (Electrogen) that runs on little or no environmentally harmful gases.
The 2015 edition was held under the slogan: “What type of world I want to live in by the year 2030”.
The ceremony was hosted at the Mary Kingsley Auditorium, Fourah Bay College in Freetown.
The award was first organized in Sierra Leone in 2013 and Salton Masalley, who now works with the IDT Lab, emerged the first winner.
Mr Sudipto Mukherjee, UNDP Country Director, said in the statement technology and new media played a central role in young people’s lives, and that it gave them voice where there was none.
“Information Communication Technology is the combination of youth power and technology is extremely potent and if used for social good can be transformative,” he said.
“While the good news is that they are using technology and new media – the challenge is to inspire them to use it to change their world in a positive way. In other words, using technology and new media to unleash the power and creative spirit of young girls and boys for Social Good.”
(C) Politico Online 01/10/15
