A campaign launched by the Kenyan NGO El-Friezo this month will trial an interactive phone app targeted at the growing number of motorbike users, particularly young men working as drivers of “borda-borda” taxis. The app has been designed as a series of games and interactive tutorials teaching basic road safety as well as safer driving tips and first aid skills.

The app is part of a wider project – financed with $99,000 (£63,000) of seed funding from the Canadian government – which is attempting to tackle the spiralling death toll from motorbike accidents in Kenya.

The country already has one of the highest rates of road deaths, and traffic accidents are the third leading cause of premature death globally (pdf), after malaria and HIV-Aids.

In recent years, motorcycle use in Kenya has grown exponentially since the government abolished import tax on motorbikes. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), there are more than 180,000 motorbikes on the country’s roads (pdf), with the numbers rising rapidly.

The move by the government to make motorbikes a more affordable mode of transport was designed to encourage their use on rural roads that are ill-suited to cars and buses, improving access to remote areas and reducing heavy congestion in urban centres.

But rising road deaths have been an unforeseen consequence of this strategy, says Pamela Muthuuri from El-Friezo, adding that the government omitted to include public safety campaigns or messages about helmet use and safe driving.

“There has been a sudden increase of motorbikes on the roads, with many young men seeing this as an opportunity to start working as taxi drivers,” she says. “Few of them have passed a driving test and many have just been taught to ride by their friends so roads have become far more dangerous as a result.”

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She hopes the mobile phone app, along with other elements of the campaign, will help to bridge the gap.

“In Kenya, we love our mobile phones,” she says. “This app is really a training manual and a set of simulated safety exercises, but it’s being delivered through a series of games that drivers can play on their phones and against each other as they wait for customers.”

Crucially, the app includes first aid exercises that are designed to supplement a training programme run in conjunction with the Kenyan Red Cross, which will initially train 500 motorcyclists to provide emergency response first aid to accident victims.

“In Kenya, we have no real emergency services for people injured in traffic accidents, which only increases the terrible death toll,” says Muthuuri. “Motorbike riders are often some of the first on the scene and can move through traffic quickly to get to an accident. If they know how to respond when they witness or hear about an accident, the life-saving potential is huge.”

The idea is that those trained will then teach emergency skills to other drivers. The project will also offer training manuals, generate data on traffic patterns and accidents, and hopes to launch the first aid programme and mobile phone app in driving schools across the country.

The project will be launched this month in two cities in the Rift valley, working with 500 motorbike taxi drivers in each city. El-Friezo is partnering Kenyan AirTel, which will provide Android phones to participants to test the app.

“Our hope is that this project will be rolled out on a national if not trans-African scale,” says Muthuuri. “We have to do something to stop these unnecessary deaths and the only way is with a cross-sector approach that uses technology alongside more traditional training and teaching methods if we want to get our message across to the right demographic.”

The project funded by the Canadian government to the tune of Sh22.4 million seeks to introduce social entrepreneurship in providing access to foods rich in protein.

Malnutrition is to blame for unacceptable high rates of stunted growth and mortality among children, especially in Africa. It causes poor brain development resulting in a waste of human capital and underdevelopment in many societies but many mothers in rural Africa are unaware of the importance of protein-rich foods.

This is against the backdrop of distribution bottlenecks, which make protein sources either unavailable or too expensive in rural Africa.

The project dubbed ‘A Mile for the Brain’ aims to address the deficient distribution of complementary food and provide access to protein-rich enhanced complementary food to mothers in rural Kenya by using innovative social enterprise approaches centered around women groups.

Existing women’s groups will receive entrepreneurship training and will be taught about these foods. The groups will package and sell the foods in their communities.

By selling smaller and thus affordable packages of food, these groups will offer it at lower prices hence making it accessible to those who need it most.

Ideally, the women will engage in door-to-door marketing of the complementary foods, informing mothers of the importance of introducing complementary foods that are nutritious and high in protein. The women selling these products can use part of the returns to invest more food for resale.

“When stunting strikes children in the first years of their lives, it not only inhibits their body’s growth, but also their minds, and their potential to fully contribute to their country’s economy,” observes Florence Mwarania, the projects’ principle investigator. She adds: “When the children grow the nation grows.”

The grant, which is provided under the Grand Challenges Canada Project, will ensure that through innovation, barriers that inhibit access to high quality, complementary foods in Africa are overcome.

“The expected result is children who will be vibrant and later in life be part of a productive labour force,” Mwarania says.

Toronto, Canada and Nairobi, Kenya – Global Integration and Innovation Africa Limited has secured a $270,000 grant from Grand Challenges Canada (which is funded by the Government of Canada) for a project in Kenya that will introduce social entrepreneurship in providing last mile access of enhanced complementary foods for weaning children in rural Kenya.

Malnutrition is to blame for unacceptable high rates of stunting and mortality among children, especially in Africa. Stunting is causing poor brain development, which is a waste of human capital and a hindrance to the growth of societies and nations. Many poor mothers in rural parts of Africa are unaware of the importance of complementary foods rich in protein. Sources of proteins are expensive or unavailable in rural areas due to the bottlenecks of distribution, the so called ‘last mile’. The project, ‘A Mile for the brain’ aims to address the deficient distribution of complementary food and provide access to protein-rich enhanced complementary food to mothers in rural areas in Kenya by using an innovative social enterprise approach centered around women groups.

Existing women’s local investing groups will receive entrepreneurship training and training on complementary foods. These groups will repackage and sell these foods in their communities. By selling smaller and thus more affordable packages of food these groups will be able to offer the food at a low enough price to make is accessible for those who need it the most. The women will engage in door-to-door marketing of the complementary foods, informing mothers of the importance of introducing complementary foods that are nutritious and high in protein. The women selling these products can use part of the return to invest in further bulk foods for resale.

Principal Investigator Florence Mwarania said: “When stunting strikes children in the first years of their lives, it not only inhibits their body’s growth, but also their minds, and their potential to fully contribute to their country’s economy. To quote the great African leader, Joachim Chisanno:  ’When children grow, the nation grows’ . This grant by Grand Challenges Canada, which is funded by the Government of Canada, will ensure that, through innovation, barriers that inhibit access to high quality complementary foods in Africa are overcome. The expected result is children who will be vibrant and later in life be part of a productive labor force.”

Co-investigator Damaris Odeny stated: “These funds from Grand Challenges Canada will help to address a crucial ‘window of opportunity’ in the first 1,000 days of a child’s life. Increasing access to complementary foods by improving the distribution network can have an enormous impact on strengthening human capital.”

The innovators were awarded the $270,000 grant after a worldwide call for proposals issued by Grand Challenges Canada, an organization funded by the Government of Canada that is dedicated to supporting Bold Ideas with Big Impact in global health. The project is part of Grand Challenges Canada’s Saving Brains program that seeks and supports bold ideas for products, services and implementation models that protect and nurture early brain development relevant to poor, marginalized populations in low- or middle-income countries.

For more information, visit giiafrica.org or grandchallenges.ca.

Contact Information

Pamela Muthuuri

Global Integration and Innovation Africa Limited

Chief Executive Officer (CEO)

pmuthuuri@gmail.com

Lode Roels

Grand Challenges Canada