{"id":5054,"date":"2019-09-03T09:56:29","date_gmt":"2019-09-03T06:56:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=5054"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:31","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:31","slug":"how-business-incubation-facility-helped-student-build-environmentally-friendly-robot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2019\/09\/03\/how-business-incubation-facility-helped-student-build-environmentally-friendly-robot\/","title":{"rendered":"How Business Incubation Facility Helped Student Build Environmentally-Friendly Robot"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By\u00a0Michel Nkurunziza<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By leveraging a business\nincubation center, Gad Nishimwe, a Civil Engineering University student from\nINES Ruhengeri has developed an environmentally friendly robot dubbed \u201cG-robot\u201d\nthat uses hydraulic pressure for lifting heavy loads, excavating and leveling\nland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During a recent summer school\non entrepreneurship and job creation for university students, he was among the\ntop three winners who got awards from a prototypes-design-competition that had\nbrought together 30 students from Rwanda, Germany and Ghana.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The robot, he explained, can\nbe used in sectors such as construction, mining sector, industries, transport\nand logistics, emergencies during car accidents among other areas that require\nlifting of heavy loads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI thought of developing this\nrobot as an innovative way that eases work in engineering. Again my robot does\nnot produce any emissions polluting the air as it uses water and solar energy.\nAnother uniqueness with my robot is that it uses three systems all oriented to\nhydraulic pressure,\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cThese are the\nmechanical system, manual system and an android system which uses mobile phones\nto control the robot\u2019s operations. This means if one system fails you can\nchoose to use another one,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The robot relies on a solar\nsystem which powers the mechanical system used to operate the hydraulic\nfunctions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the manual system, one\nhas to use the pulley that transfers its energy into the water to get hydraulic\npressure<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The android operating system\nis also solar-powered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn construction, engineers\nuse different machines; some in lifting heavy things, another in leveling land\nand the other in excavating. But my Robot is affordable and efficient since it\ncombines three expensive machines into one device using water,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the one he designed combines\nfunctions of three machines at once which is cheaper, the young innovator said\nthat one machine on the market using fuel that can lift between 10 tonnes and\n15 tonnes costs between $100,000 and $500,000  which is quite expensive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Nishimwe explained that\nthe current robot prototype can lift up to ten Kilogrammes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen I have adequate\nfinancial capacity, I plan on developing one that can lift between 500 Kg and\nfive Tonnes. That could cost me between Rwf30 million and Rwf90 million. To be\ndeveloped in the industry we need financial support since I do not have\nfinancial capacity on my own,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Promoting practice-oriented\nentrepreneurship education<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Dr Fabien\nHagenimana, the Vice-Chancellor of INES-Ruhengeri, business incubation centres\nat universities are needed to facilitate students in their entrepreneurship\njourney.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said that many students or\ngraduates develop ideas that can be turned into businesses but end up failing\ndue to lack of incubation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The incubation centre, he said\ntrains the students on how to turn ideas, prototypes into viable business\nprojects and thereby create their own jobs. He added that linking them to\nstakeholders, financiers and banks could ease the implementation of the ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cThis is important\nbecause when students are not incubated they end up failing. For instance, out\nof 100 students only 10 can come up with real viable business yet 90 per cent\nof them have ideas that can be turned into viable projects. That is why we\norganize career every year where students showcase their potential on what they\ncan do on the labour market,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rwanda is keen on addressing\nunemployment especially among the youth and with government target to create\n1.5 million jobs by 2024, Hagenimana said this cannot be achieved if youth do\nnot have adequate insights on job creation and entrepreneurship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The entrepreneurship\npromotion summer school in which G-robot was developed was organized under\nAfrican German Entrepreneurship Academy (AGEA) to facilitate students in their\nentrepreneurship journey and thereby contributes to the improved employability\nof graduates through a high level of practice orientation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The theme for this year was\n\u201cPromoting practice-oriented entrepreneurship education at Universities\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The joint initiative was\ndeveloped by the International SEPT Program of Leipzig University in\ncooperation with its partners in Africa for entrepreneurship promotion\nactivities especially business incubator establishment as well as vibrant\nbusiness linkages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The program is a research and\ntraining program dedicated to practical experience in the management and\npromotion of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) worldwide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The aim is to promote\ncutting-edge entrepreneurship education in Africa as well as the establishment\nof practice-oriented cooperation with start-ups and businesses<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read original article<\/a>\non The\nNew Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Michel Nkurunziza By leveraging a business incubation center, Gad Nishimwe, a Civil Engineering University student from INES Ruhengeri has developed an environmentally friendly robot dubbed \u201cG-robot\u201d that uses hydraulic pressure…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5055,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}