Malawi’s Kabaza’ charger ‘scientist’ in global innovators competition

A scientist from the Physics Department, Chancellor College, a constituent college of the Malawi University (Unima), has been shortlisted for this year’s Global Scientific Innovators Award.

Mixon Faluweki, a third year student pursuing Bachelor of Education Science degree, majoring in physics, developed a bicycle charger,which he named the ‘Padoko Charger’.

His innovation allows people who use bicycles for transport to also use it for charging their cell phones, power their radios or mp3 players, and also recharge their torch/lamps.

The  Padoko charger has been warmly accepted by people in rural areas who use bicycles for transport and especially those people who run kabaza business.

The innovation uses very few components and has low running costs which make it comparatively cheap. It fully charges a phone within a short time.

His innovation will greatly reduce the running cost of sing cell phones by cutting down the money spent for charging the phones.

In view of this development, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and GIST Tech-I selected his innovation alongside other 65 innovations from a total of 502 applications worldwide, to compete for this year’s Global Scientific Innovators’ Award.

Mixon is the only Malawi’s ambassador in the completion. The competition has now entered a voting phase where 30 contestants out of the selected 67 will proceed to the finals in Morocco.

Malawians have opportunity to see one of their own winning the grand prize and be on the world scientific map by voting for Mixon Faluweki online daily until 1st October, 2014.

To vote, follow the link: https://review.wizehive.com/voting/aaaspublicvote/25831.

“People can vote once every 24 hours. They can even use either e-mail address or a Facebook account to create voting account. However, when using an e-mail account they should remember to verify through inbox by clicking on the link sent by wisehive, otherwise the vote/s will not be counted. Verification is done only once,” explained Faluweki.