Jesse Mwangi and Wuntia Gomda, students of the African Leadership Academy, a South African university, have received US$100,000 in Abu Dhabi on January 14, 2019, in the United Arab Emirates. The sum was intended to reward their efforts and to make their establishment more sustainable.
The Living machine earned Jesse Mwangi and Wuntia Gomda, two South African students, the Zayed Prize in the “World Secondary Schools” category. The project of the two young students, which seduced the jury, aims, on the one hand, to set up a “living” machine to treat grey water to give it a second life. The second component of the project involves the installation of solar energy projects to enable people to be enlightened and to promote local development. A prize that, in the eyes of the winners, seems to be a strong encouragement: “It was a great honour to have been chosen as the winner of the Zayed Prize for Sustainability. And I am very motivated to think about what we will be able to achieve at home and the impact it will have on people’s lives,” said Wuntia Gomda.
The first prize in the “Energy” category was won by Bboxx, a young London company that has already installed 150,000 solar systems in 35 countries, including several African countries. Globally, it has been able to connect more than 675,000 people to clean and affordable energy solutions. The winner received US$600,000. This money should make it possible to further improve the solutions developed so far.
The Zayed Prize for Sustainable Development is awarded by the United Arab Emirates to winners from all over the world. For the 2019 edition, 2000 applications were registered. They came from 130 countries, mostly African. The 66 winners who have received awards since the launch of the prize in 2008 have impacted the lives of more than 318 million people through their achievements. The call for projects for the 2019 edition closes on May 30, 2019. The categories of the Zayed Prize for Sustainability are health, food, energy, water and global secondary schools.
Luchelle Feukeng
