The Durban University of Technology in partnership with the eThekwini Municipality and other stakeholders invited students, pupils and up-and-coming entrepreneurs to participate in an Innovation Trek and Summit, which took place at the Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban on 6, 11 and 12 June 2014.
eThekwini Mayor, Cllr James Nxumalo said that the summit was held in order to create more employment opportunities, assist local entrepreneurs to grow their business and to help government win the war against poverty and unemployment. He also added that the municipality, through this summit, also aimed to provide a platform for knowledge-sharing, capacity-building, networking and technology-based economic and social development, as well as increase innovation awareness amongst students.
The Innovation Trek which was held a week prior to the summit, allowed groups of students, participants in the Innovation Summit, to visit various areas in eThekwini that faced different issues in the community and to find ways to solve these issues. These innovative solutions were then showcased at the summit and the winning group was awarded for their innovation. Team Cato Maniac’s idea of digital signage powered by solar energy, was the winning team.
There were 10 DUT students who were chosen to be part of the prestigious event. One of the attendees, third-year Sports Studies student Tyrone Rudolph, said that he had thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity.
“It was a great privilege to be chosen by DUT to attend such a summit and to be able to see first-hand the problems that communities had faced and to try and come up with possible solutions to the problems in the various poverty-stricken communities,” he said.
DUT Engineering student Sanera Maharaj added that she also thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
“Some of the most inspirational people also spoke at the summit about their innovations. People like Siya Xusa from Umtata had developed his own rocket fuel that was patented by NASA. He is now studying engineering at Harvard and is in the process of developing a fuel cell battery. Stafford Masie, the ex-CEO of Google South Africa, blew me away with his presentation on how simple it is to innovate,” she said excitedly.
Sanera enjoyed the Innovation Trek which entailed going out to the communities and finding solutions to the various community issues.
“My group was assigned to PINK1 (Phoenix, Inanda, Ntuzuma, Kwa-Mashu). Our specific idea was to get the youth out of problems such as drugs, alcohol and gangs. When we spoke to the youth of Kwa-Mashu and Inanda, some of them had matriculated but were uncertain what the next step for them would be. This resulted in most of the youth in these areas, getting involved in drugs, alcohol and gangs.
“Our proposed solution presented at the summit was for the formation of an Information Access Machine which we had called I-AM Box which could be placed in various locations in the township area where the youth could browse and search for possible jobs, bursaries as well as the numbers of youth organisations such as Youth In Action, which could assist the young, unemployed youth in developing their business ideas,” said Sanera.
Despite not winning, Sanera’s team was approached by various municipal members and people in the private sector that expressed keen interest in developing the I-AM Box idea further. Her group are in the process of refining their idea and putting a structured proposal together.
“I’m looking forward to where this idea could take my team and what it could do for all the lost youth of this country,” she said.
