Esther Kimani won Royal Academy of Engineering's Africa Prize

Esther Kimani has become the winner of the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation which is Africa’s biggest engineering prize. She secured her place as the winner because of the selection of her brilliant creation of early crop pest and disease detection device as the winning innovation. The device holds the capacity to detect and identify agricultural pests and diseases by reducing the crop losses for smallholder farmers by up to 30 percent with increasing yields by as much as 40 percent.

The Royal Academy of Engineering organized the Africa Prize Alumni Reunion in order to celebrate the Prize’s 10th anniversary. It brought 100 innovators together for a three-day programme from the past decade ahead of the final ceremony. 

Esther stated, “My parents would lose up to 40% of their crops each farming season, which affected our standard of living. We are empowering smallholder farmers, many of whom are women, to increase their income. We aim to scale to one million farmers in the next five years.”

She received KSh 8.3 million for the advancement of her device, being the largest amount awarded to a winner following the 10th Anniversary. The final business pitches of the four finalists were delivered to the Academy judges as well as approximately 700 in-person audience.