BIH honours young innovators
Keikantse Lesemela | Monday August 18, 2014 12:00
Participants were tasked with developing and designing an innovative engineering solution that can be implemented to solve current mining problems in Botswana.
The competition was classed in two categories, National Biotech and CleanTech and the engineering and mining design. Participants were supposed to come up with solutions to any challenge in the pipeline from mineral exploration, mining, mineral processing to use of mine effluents and waste.
Reuben Kerobale was awarded the first prize in Biotechnology with a prize of P50 000 and a laptop. Aubrey Ramokoba and Tshepo Gaogane won the first prize in engineering and mining technology category and walked away with a prize of P5 000, a Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (SAIMM) membership subscription and other prizes.
Speaking during the awards ceremony on Thursday, BIH Cluster Development Director, Budzanani Tacheba, said the awards are meant to strengthen and articulate innovations in the clean and biotechnology areas. “The competition offers the academia, science and engineering students from Faculty of Engineering Technology Colleges and Universities in Botswana as well as mining professionals an opportunity to use their academic prowess, creativity and industry know-how to develop and design solutions for current problems encountered in the Botswana mining arena,” he said.
The judging of the National Innovation Award was based on working models, prototypes and artifacts submitted under the overarching themes of biotechnology and clean technology.
He explained that the development of the award is the primary objective of commercialisation and employment creation. “These competitions allow young people whom we can not reach to participate in the large market,” said Tacheba. Tacheba highlighted that the launch of the awards will uncover viable innovations in biotechnology and clean technology.
“We firmly believe that the launch of this awards will not only serve to uncover viable innovations in biotechnology and clean technology, but will also act as a national catalyst to continue to unearth technological innovations in other sectors,” he said.
For his part, Director for Vibration Signature Analysis and Design, South Africa, Mark Gordon, said the competitions would go a long in helping to bring solutions to the problems in the mining sector. “Mining has a lot of challenges, I believe the young people have solutions to these problems so through these competitions they can be able to open up their minds and find solutions to these problems,” he said.