The participating teams are divided into three major categories which are, maker league, engineering league, and hospitals of future.
Technology is taking part everywhere in this modern era of time, specially to face the challenges that require a sustainable development and help less fortune communities to have the privilege of standard living conditions.
Africa by its high potential and promising future should be in the front line for implementing the technology that help local communities to overcome the daily difficulties which hindering the advancement of the continent in areas as industry, health and agriculture. And to do so, a generation of brilliant young African technology geniuses should be leading this and take the opportunity.
If you look around the continent you would see few initiatives that aim to push Africa in sectors as Robotic technology, in which we really need to advance our young generation and equip them the knowledge that they need for making breakthroughs.
Pan – African Robotic competition (PARC) is one of these few initiatives that aim to encourage young Africans to show their talent in the field of Robotics. The competition established in the year 2016 and founded by the brilliant African Scientist Dr. Sidy Ndao, in which he hoped to encourage young school and university students to do projects on robotics and adapt their projects to serve in solving the problems that we face in the continent. PARC 2018 comes with fantastically branded theme (One- Health Innovation), in which the participating students will be asked to overcome the health problems in Africa through the topics of technology – Surgical Robotics, Wearable Biosensors, Hand-held Point of Care Diagnostics, Virtual and Augmented Reality in Healthcare education, Organs on a chip, Internet of Things for Healthcare, Drug/Vaccine development and manufacturing, etc. The competition has got over 160 students from across the African continent representing countries as (Senegal, Mali, Gambia, Nigeria, Sudan, Nigeria, Benin, and South Africa etc.).In fact, the competition is a four days program starting from 24 -28 July, where the participants will engage in designing, counteracting and coding robotics, and at the end 28 July the final competition will be held . The participating teams are divided into three major categories which are, maker league, engineering league, and hospitals of future.
PARC competitions meant to have impact on the new generation of students, which is really needed at this stage in our beloved Africa. Dr. Sidy says” looking at the situation of the continent these days, it really worth it to have such competition”. He also add, “Though we have struggled to have the competition this year, but we are determinate to go forward and enlarge the scope of PARC in the future”.
NEF Fellow Dr. Sidy Ndao with team Senegal makers’ league, the team preparations – Picture by Seydou Katikon
From the enthusiasm and the noble energy on the faces of PARC participates, you could really feel that the future is promising and filled with hope , but we need to have more of Africa based businesses and institutions to help sponsoring such cavities and present their generous support.
About the author, Mr. Mohammed Kamal Hadi is the NEF Sudan Ambassador and a researcher, currently working and lecturing at University of Medical Science and Technology (UMST) as well teaches short courses at the National University, in the field of material science.
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