Niger's first Africa Prize winner built a patient monitor his own hospitals can repair — and won £50,000 (about $68,000)

Mamane Kabirou Ousseini used to repair medical equipment in Niger's hospitals, and he kept watching imported patient monitors sit broken because spare parts and specialists were far away. So he built his own. His company, Likita Care, makes monitoring devices in Niger that local teams can maintain and repair, with software that lets health workers watch several patients at once — heart, general patient and pregnancy monitoring included. More than 70 units are already working in five medical centres, tested with over 100 patients. Today in Johannesburg he became the first engineer from Niger ever to enter — and win — the Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation, taking £50,000 (about $68,000) from the Royal Academy of Engineering to grow the company at home and into neighbouring West African markets. The runners-up, from Kenya and South Africa, each received £10,000 (about $14,000) for a mobile dialysis clinic, a portable heart monitor and a system that turns urine into fertiliser.

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