Xaviera Kowo has designed an award-winning waste-processing robot and aspires to take it to the streets of Africa.
Grit, the name 19-year-old Xaviera Kowo chose for her award-winning waste-processing robot, is an apt one. Force of character, courage and resolve, all qualities of a person with grit, will be needed in spades to address one of Africa’s burning issues – the collection and management of waste.
“It took time to find the right name, but when I looked up this English word and saw what it meant, I thought ‘Whoa, yes, that’s exactly what we need to solve this problem,’” says the aspiring STEM pioneer, a computer-science student at ICT University in Cameroon’s capital city, Yaounde.
A major challenge for Cameroon, Kowo’s home country, is processing waste in a more sustainable way, she says. “Our trash still goes into one dustbin. We don’t recycle anything.”
The problem affects many other countries across Africa, where just 55% of the continent’s municipal solid waste (MSW) is collected from households and businesses to be disposed of, according to a 2018 report from the United Nations Environment Programme. This is a far cry, it states, from the ambitious targets set by the African Union in 2008 to sustainably recycle 50% of waste by 2023.
More worryingly, 90% of the waste that is being collected is being disposed of at unregulated dumps or landfills, and is often burnt on open fires, with potentially devastating human and environmental costs. Low- to middle-income countries, and particularly those in West Africa, such as Cameroon, have become dumping grounds for illicit exports of e-waste from developed countries where there are fewer or poorly enforced regulations. Medical waste from COVID-19, in as-yet unquantifiable amounts, is an additional burden facing African countries in 2022.
From this potential environmental catastrophe, however, there are opportunities to build more sustainable ecosystems and circular economies. Researchers are looking into how communities can use resources more efficiently, such as by converting food waste into energy, compost or soil enhancer, for example, and how innovation in plastic-packaging design and disposal could help reduce waste.
Scientific and technological innovations, such as artificial intelligence and robotics, are a part of the solution. So too is mobilising Africa’s youthful population, where it’s estimated that approximately 70% of people are under the age of 30, according to the World Bank.
Proving the potential of Africa’s youth, in 2021 Kowo’s robot won first prize in the junior category of Les Margaret, a competition that pays homage to Margaret Hamilton, an American computer scientist who helped Apollo 11 astronauts land on the Moon in 1969. Run by JFD, an international growth accelerator for women in STEM, the competition rewards African and European girls aged seven to 18 for their pioneering societal inventions.
Although Kowo admits to being “totally surprised” by the win, it has given her confidence to realise her vision, which is driven by social values. “One thing my mentors always said is that, whenever we do something, we need to do it for society, for our country,” she says.
Powered by potential
Not wanting to take all the glory for Grit’s development, Kowo says it all began in 2019, when she was one of five students from her secondary school to represent Cameroon in the FIRST Global Challenge in Dubai. To enter the Olympic-style international robotics competition meant submitting a high-spec solution to a pressing community problem.
Although her team did not win, Kowo was not ready to give up. On returning home, with support and funding from her school for a robotics kit, she was able to bring Grit to life. Explaining some of its specifications, she says her robot has embedded motion sensors which enables it to collect, sort and dispose of rubbish at a central hub. It also has a solar-powered rechargeable battery “to reduce its carbon footprint”.
Across the world, robotics technology like this is viewed as a promising solution for the global waste predicament, and there are multiple initiatives at varying stages of development, such as Everyday Robots, which is spun out of Alphabet’s X- Moonshot Factory, and Jellyfishbot, a French robot that collects floating waste and hydrocarbons on the surface of water bodies.
Taking robots beyond the prototype stage requires hefty capital investment. In Cameroon, there is shortage of resources and high-tech skills, says Kowo. “It is hard to find people who say, ‘Yes we want to fund this, we want to incubate your project, we want you to become a start-up.’”
But this is changing, she says, and there is a growing number of investment funds looking for technology-led green initiatives in Africa. The non-profit Global Innovation Fund, for example, is investing in innovators such as Mr Green, a tech-enabled plastics recycling start-up in Kenya. The World Bank’s City Climate Finance Gap Fund is another organisation this is supporting developing countries to “identify and prioritise climate-smart urban infrastructure investments”.
Role models and the road less travelled
In Africa, the pathway for women into careers in STEM is not a smooth one, says Kowo. Challenges include patriarchal attitudes, an education system still geared towards boys and poor implementation of policies to close the gender gap, according to a report from The African Academy of Sciences. The result, the report states, is that women are still “substantially under-represented” in STEM careers, and account for only 28% of science researchers.
Now in her second year studying computer science at ICT University, Kowo says a career in STEM wasn’t something she’d considered as a young girl. But everything changed when she joined the Tassah Academy, a secondary school founded in 2009 by Janet Fofang, a Cameroonian STEM pioneer and teacher.
Role models such as Fofang and Regina Honu, the Ghanaian software engineer and social impact entrepreneur, have a vital role to play in helping young women develop an interest in STEM and stick with it. Acknowledging this, Kowo says: “Not only did [Fofang] give me the STEM programme in school, she held my hand, she carried me through this process.”
Now the robotics champion is committed to using her influence to do the same. Since winning the Les Margaret Award, and the flurry of media attention that followed, Kowo has been appointed as her university’s student ambassador. Initiatives she is carrying out in her role include spearheading a university STEM club and technology ‘boot camp’ to accelerate skill development in secondary schools and aid the transition to tertiary education, and launching technology-focused interschool competitions.
“I’m totally into getting more people, especially women, into this industry, because that is where the opportunity is,” says Kowo.
Looking to the future, Kowo’s short-term goal is to finish her computer-science degree and she is determined to see her robot collecting trash in homes, businesses and on the streets of Cameroon, and perhaps even across Africa.
But to improve the initial design, she is looking for a “research team, funding and coaching”. In return, she promises force of character, courage and resolve, in short, true grit.
Follow Xaviera Kowo | Twitter | Instagram | Twitter | Website
Article by Pamela Whitby
Comments are closed.