GAIIA Ceremony at the WAITRO Summit 2022

Valuable insights into German-African scientific cooperation and ways to translate research findings into practical solutions

WAITRO is happy to announce that the ceremony for the German-African Innovation Incentive Award – GAIIA will be celebrated during the WAITRO Summit 2022, taking place on November 14-15 in Cape Town, South Africa.

German-African Innovation Incentive Award – GAIIA

The German-African Innovation Incentive Award – GAIIA honors outstanding achievements of African researchers and recognizes the central role of research and innovation in the development of modern knowledge societies. At the same time, it supports African-German scientific cooperation to further develop innovative scientific approaches and to translate research results into practical solutions. For this, the awarded African scientists and their German cooperation partners receive up to 150.000 € funding for a two-year joint project, selected by a high-ranking international jury.

The first award was presented to four African scientists in 2018 by H.E. Anja Karkiczek. The second award, supposed to be presented to six African scientists in 2020, was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Hence, this side event will honor six scientists from Ghana, Morocco, South Africa, Tunisia, and Uganda whose projects contribute substantially to implementing the sustainable development goals with their broadly diversified and application-oriented research work.

After the subsequent award ceremony, the awardees will give brief lightning talks, focusing on the pertinent points and facts of their projects, together with their German cooperation partners.

Contribution to the Achievement of the SDGs

The projects focus on a number of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), such as:

• Innovative cereal storage and handling technology to combat aflatoxin contamination in Kenya’s maize supplies (SDG 2)
• Supporting maternal health in rural southwestern Uganda using a mobile phone-based multimedia technology; improving safety of infusion therapy in low resource countries (SDG 3)
• Soiling detection for photovoltaic (PV) application and cleaning optimization in North Africa (SDG 7)
• A crowdsourcing platform for African sign languages vocabulary (SDG 10)
• PV technology for providing heating and electricity for new Egyptian buildings (SDG 11)
• Innovative valorization of olive mill effluents, recovery from e-waste through small-scale recyclers in Africa; cassava residues for performance materials (SDG 12)
• Localization, quantification, and utilization of Water Hyacinth in the Volta river based (SDG 13)

GAIIA Winners will share their experiences at the WAITRO Summit

The interactive panel discussion will focus on the role of scientific enterprise in addressing societal needs of African countries and on strategies to transfer innovative solutions from science into application. GAIIA winners will share experiences, challenges, and best practices in implementing their developed prototypes/services/solutions into sustainable application. These challenges are universal to all disciplines and all countries, hence the discussion will lead to an engaged debate with active participation by the forum’s audience.

In-depth conversations with the awardees will be facilitated at a market place/poster session subsequent to the panel discussion in an informal setting.

WAITRO Summit 2022 | Innovative Partnerships. Global Impact.

Inspired by the SDG 17 “Partnerships for the Goals”, the upcoming WAITRO Summit will bring together key research and innovation stakeholders from around the world for two days of networking, learning, and forging new partnerships to accelerate the impact on the global goals.

The program will feature keynotes, panel discussions, capacity development workshops, networking sessions and much more.

Registrations are still open!