Odete Muximpua, Achenyo Idachaba, and Betelhem Dessie are bringing change to some of the poorest areas in the world.
With investment and support from the United States and other countries, these three women of African descent are helping to advance local solutions to African problems. They are pushing opportunity in the digital world and promoting global economic growth with market economies that account for three-quarters of world trade.
There’s lots of water along the Mozambican coastline that faces the Indian Ocean, but not the kind you can drink. Like in many developing countries, people struggle to access public services like clean water.
“I felt that water management was a challenge in my country and worldwide,” Odete Muximpua told the World Bank. “I understood that it was a scarce resource, and I thought that’s where I could make a difference.”
After completing her bachelor’s degree in 2004, Muximpua began working as a researcher in the sustainable use of water resources in wetlands and improving community water supplies. In 2007, the World Bank was looking for an analyst to assist work on a national urban water and sanitation strategy. Muximpua applied and got the job. It was while working at World Bank that she returned to university to start her master’s degree.
Currently, Muximpua is working on the six-year, $100 million Lilongwe Water and Sanitation Project, which will help increase access to improved water services and safely managed sanitation services in Lilongwe City. The World Bank project in Malawi’s capital city will include transmission mains, pumping stations, and storage reservoirs. It will also upgrade 142 kilometers of the existing distribution network and expand the distribution network by about 186 kilometers to areas of the city not currently served by piped water.
Muximpua’s success has inspired her mother, who is now working toward a graduate degree. She and Muximpua’s grandmother, who has a fourth-grade education, are incredibly proud of her.
“To be a woman and engineer, also to be able to make a difference in some people’s lives—that makes them happy,” Muximpua told the World Bank. “They hear from people how I helped them with their water and sanitation, and they are proud.”
American-born Achenyo Idachaba’s TED Talk has gotten more than 1.8 million views. She is the head of MitiMeth, a Nigeria-based company that makes handicrafts from aquatic weeds and other agro-waste.
In 2009, Idachaba relocated from the United States to Nigeria. Once settled in the city of Lagos, she took in local sights like the view from the iconic Third Mainland Bridge, one of the three bridges linking Lagos Island to the mainland, and the longest in West Africa. “I looked to my left and saw this very arresting image,” Idachaba said.
“It was an image of fishing boats that had been hemmed in by dense mats of water hyacinth, and I was pained by what I saw because I thought to myself, ‘These poor fisherfolk—how are they going to go about their daily activities with these restrictions?’ And then I thought, ‘There’s got to be a better way.’”
In Bayeku, a riverine community in Ikorodu, Lagos, she saw how the invasive aquatic weed had infested waterways.
“Who would have thought that this plant with round leaves, inflated stems, and showy, lavender flowers would cause such havoc in these communities?” Idachaba asks in her TED Talk.
The plant known as water hyacinth goes by more evocative local names. In the Igala-speaking part of Nigeria, the plant is known as A Kp’iye Kp’oma, she explained.
“It translates to ‘death to mother and child,’” she said. After Idachaba’s research, she came up with a win-win solution: First, get into the waterways and harvest the water hyacinth. That way, you create access. Second, dry the water hyacinth stems. Third, weave the water hyacinth into products. “The third step was a challenge,” she said. “See, I’m a computer scientist by background and not someone in the creative arts.” Idachaba learned how to weave and transform the dried water hyacinth stems into long ropes.
“With my long ropes, I was equipped to make products, and that was the beginning of partnerships—working with rattan basket makers to come up with products,” she said.
Idachaba then took this knowledge back into the riverine communities.
“Taking the weeds and weaving them into products that can be sold ... we have pens, we have tableware, we have purses, we have tissue boxes,” Idachaba said. “Thereby, helping the communities to see water hyacinth in a different light and seeing water hyacinth as being valuable, being aesthetic, being durable, tough, resilient. Changing names, changing livelihoods.”
Betelhem Dessie has been dubbed Ethiopia’s tech queen. In 2017, she was invited to speak at the Milken Institute Women’s Leaders’ Summit. Dessie started iCog—Anyone Can Code to create a platform in which children throughout the developing world can have the same opportunity as she had when she was a child.
A technology education entrepreneur and project manager, Dessie has taught children computing and robotics and has partnered with iCog Labs, Ethiopia’s first AI and robotics lab, co-founded by American AI pioneer Ben Goertzel and leading Ethiopian techno futurist Getnet Aseffa.
Dessie started coding with Visual Basic and HTML at the age of 10. As a software engineering student at Addis Ababa Institute of Technology, she has continued to master the key aspects of computer science and robotics. According to This Is Africa, artificial intelligence (AI) and bioinformatics research is part of the services rendered by iCog Labs. Last July, Ethiopia was one of the few countries to host Sophia, the famous AI humanoid robot, at the Information and Communication Technology International Expo in Addis Ababa.
