Out of the sixteen countries in Southern Africa (SADC), the most inventive and innovative women are from Botswana, as was revealed by a report by the UK Intellectual Property Office in September 2019, titled “Gender Profiling in Worldwide Patenting: An Analysis of Female Inventorship”.
This story is about the economic value of the African woman’s brain. She is beautiful, and is also brainy as seen in the dominance of the black woman in the world of inventions. According to the report, based on a study by the UK IP Office, the top ten countries with greater proportion of female inventors are Togo, Uganda, Latvia, Liberia, Rwanda, Cuba, Botswana, Sri Lanka, Papua New Guinea and Georgia. Botswana female inventors are seventh in the world, and first in Southern Africa.
Let’s talk about Eng. Mmoloki Makoba, Electricity, and Economics awhile.
Within the daily fuss of life and career building by youths, there is a female engineer that chose to take her ambitious further than expected of women, by becoming one of the few in energy generation sector of global economics. She has internationally and national funded innovations in Gasification.
Mmoloki Makoba is a Chemical Engineering PhD Researcher, a Global Expo Investment Battlefield 2019 winner, Botswana Innovation Fund 2019 winner from the Botswana International University of Science and Technology, famous for an innovation of turning Coal into Electricity. If you have ever wondered how the processing of turning Coal into Electricity actually works, Mmoloki, the beneficiary of the Botswana Innovation Fund 2019, shows how she made the discovery.
In her own words, “the technology is a small-scale integrated gasification power plant using Botswana coal in a more economic and environmentally friendly manner. It is therefore a less harmful process than the conventional power generation process. The plant targets to produce electricity for homes and businesses in areas without access to the national grid. Imagine Coal gasification for power generation, whose objective is to characterize Botswana coal with the purpose of syngas production that will be used for power generation”.
There is need for such an innovation because of the environmental factors around coal powered electricity generation. Botswana demand for electricity is 530 MW, 70% is supplied by Eskom in South Africa and the rest by Morupule Power Plant which uses a coal fired power generator to produce only 132 MW from four 33 MW coal fired. Despite the failed plans to build more power stations in the country, the conventional power generation is harmful to the environment. It is necessary to have alternative power generation which is more environmentally friendly and more effective than the current processes.
Read more in Moakanyi Magazine.
