Niger's first Africa Prize winner builds hospital monitors his own hospitals can actually repair

Mamane Kabirou Ousseini learned his trade fixing medical equipment in Niger's hospitals, where imported patient monitors routinely became useless the moment a spare part failed and no specialist could be reached. So he built his own. Likita Care is a locally manufactured monitoring platform — made with 3D printing, CNC cutting and electronics assembly in Niger — that tracks 12 vital signs across adults, newborns and unborn babies, lets one dashboard watch 10 to 20 patients at once, and gives offline AI decision support to clinics with unreliable internet. More than 70 units have been produced and five medical centres are already using it. On 28 October in Johannesburg, Ousseini became the first engineer from Niger to win the Royal Academy of Engineering's Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation, receiving £50,000 (about $68,000) to take Likita Care commercial and into other West African markets.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: tech innovation