Innovation across Africa takes center stage at Rice360’s first networkwide design competition

The Rice360 Institute for Global Health Technologies and its invention education partners across Africa marked a major milestone at the first Invention Education Networkwide Design Competition, a two-day event held Nov. 20-21 that brought together the most promising student-led innovations from seven university design studios across the continent. The competition showcased how the network’s hands-on, engineering-driven approach to engineering education is empowering the next generation of African innovators to transform neonatal and maternal care.

The pan-African competition was implemented to strengthen collaboration among partner engineering institutions across the Invention Education Africa network, broaden mentorship and student engagement and increase visibility for each program. Out of this idea grew one of the most dynamic gatherings in the network’s history. Spearheaded by Williams Baah, Rice360’s Invention Education Africa programs coordinator, and co-planned with three design studio managers from across the network, the competition set a new benchmark for invention education on the continent featuring projects from five countries. Funding for team support and prizes was made possible through NEST360 programming, further strengthening ties between innovation education and real-world impact.

Each design studio, located at major universities in Ethiopia, Tanzania, Kenya, Malawi and Nigeria, held its own preliminary local competition earlier in the fall. From there, two teams per studio advanced, creating a cohort of 14 semifinalists for the networkwide event.

Across the two days, teams shared their ideas through short videos, poster pitches and in-depth technical presentations. Judges evaluated the innovations not only for creativity and engineering rigor but also for feasibility, affordability and potential to address urgent challenges in newborn and maternal health.

“The level of polish, ambition and technical depth we saw was extraordinary,” Baah said. “You could feel how much the design studios have grown and how committed these students are to solving real problems in their communities.”

The competition’s top honors highlighted four standout innovations addressing critical gaps in maternal and neonatal care. EDEN from Kenyatta University earned first place for the HemoDrop Detector, a fully automated, suction-enabled system that continuously measures postpartum blood loss in real time. By enabling earlier detection of hemorrhage — the leading cause of maternal mortality across sub-Saharan Africa — the device has the potential to dramatically improve outcomes for mothers in clinics and hospitals.

NeoHelo from the Dar es Salaam Institute of Technology won second place for SAFESTART, a digital infant radiant warmer with integrated phototherapy that simultaneously treats hypothermia and jaundice, two of the most common and dangerous conditions facing newborns in low-resource settings.

Third place went to team K-VEST from the University of Ibadan for a low-cost kangaroo care vest that monitors vital signs, detects anomalies and alerts caregivers, strengthening kangaroo mother care practices and improving continuous monitoring in both hospital and home environments.

The People’s Choice Award was presented to team Mavericks from the Malawi University of Science and Technology for MACPAP, an automated CPAP system that tracks oxygen saturation and transmits data to a central unit, enabling clinicians to safely manage multiple babies simultaneously while reducing the risk of hypoxia and hyperoxia.

The competition spotlighted a remarkable breadth of ideas from across the network, including a low-cost infrared-guided device to improve neonatal venipuncture from Addis Ababa University; a screening device for retinopathy of prematurity, helping prevent childhood blindness from Kenyatta University; and a smart diagnostic kit that detects early signs of newborn pneumonia within minutes from the University of Lagos, among others. Together, these innovations reflect the range and depth of challenges students are tackling as well as the progress being made in strengthening in-country engineering capacity for global health.

For Rice360, the competition showcased the growing strength of the Invention Education Network, originally built during NEST360’s first phase and now entering a new era of independence and sustainability. It also strengthened technical mentorship pipelines, connected students with expert judges and advisers from across Africa and opened new channels for sharing ideas between universities. The success of the event is expected to boost participation in the Rice360 Undergraduate Global Health Design Competition in Houston in April 2026. Perhaps most importantly, however, it underscored how these design studios, modeled after Rice University’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen and Rice360’s approach to invention education, are stationed as independent hubs where young African innovators can practice  hands-on engineering training to advance local innovation and meaningful health impact.

“This was a milestone for our partners,” Baah said. “It showed what’s possible when students have the tools, guidance and creative freedom to design for impact. The future of global health innovation is being shaped right here in African universities by African engineers.”