Accelerating Open IoT and Big Data Innovation in Africa

Project Information

WAZIHUB

Grant agreement ID: 780229

DOI

10.3030/780229

Project closed

EC signature date 6 December 2017

Start date 1 May 2018

End date 31 July 2021

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)

Total cost

€ 2 343 532,13

EU contribution

€ 1 998 687,49

Coordinated by

FONDAZIONE BRUNO KESSLER
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - WAZIHUB (Accelerating Open IoT and Big Data Innovation in Africa)

Reporting period: 2019-11-01 to 2021-07-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

WAZIHUB (in Swahili for Open-Hub) is an EU-Africa innovation project aiming to create a network of “Open Hubs” for designing IoT and Big Data solutions, adapted for the local environment. The vision of WAZIHUB is to exploit IoT potential and share IoT Technologies best-practices through the involvement of innovation communities and stakeholders. Our targets are young entrepreneurs (including woman), startups, developers and innovation Hubs operating at the local level, but also at the national level and African-wide. The project enables the creation of Open Hubs throughout Africa, where IoT technology can then be adapted to match local service needs. The project goal is to iterate and extract value from value-added IoT innovative services based on the in WAZIUP IoT technologies (www.waziup.io).

WAZIHUB target is to support, at large-scale, innovative users and usage of the above-mentioned technologies, with a goal towards the sustainability and wider-impact of the proposed solutions. Sustainability is one of the main concerns of innovation projects therefore the consortium will jointly target finding more and more users around WAZIHUB and offer a value to them based on their requirements, enabling them to easily tailor existing solutions to their needs.

In order to reach the WAZIHUB vision, the project addresses the following objectives:
• Accessibility of the technology, promoting the concept of a “smart village” reference model: Local accessibility of the fine-grained, affordable, simple to use IoT-Cloud solutions/development-kits for rapid prototyping and testing ideas and fostering innovation
• Accessibility of process for start-up creation and acceleration: Through engagement of local innovation hubs, the creation of new IoT business spin-offs and start-ups and acceleration process is to be applied in a local and shared in an African-wide IoT WAZIHUB ecosystem (e.g. what steps and paths to be followed when, with what technology, for what purpose)
• Accessibility of business models and partnership for sustainability and growth-hacking: Enabling stakeholders to more easily catalyze around valid, innovative and tested propositions; WAZIHUB will show how to replicate the successful involvement of stakeholders around innovative services (e.g. what business model, funding, partnerships, first market replication).

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

we developed a complete IoT and Cloud platform for entrepreneurs and startups. The WaziHub solution allows the users to create and deploy their IoT applications both in the Cloud and on the IoT gateway. It offers “out-of-box” complete solutions from sensors nodes to applications. It is particularly adapted to tough conditions, for example for low power and long distance applications. The platform comprises 3 components, namely WaziDev, WaziGate and WaziCloud:
• WaziDev: IoT LoRa development board based on open source hardware Arduino. WAZIDev is used for rapid prototyping of the sensor nodes.
• WaziGate: IoT LoRa Gateway and edge platform based on Raspberry-pi and which includes the software framework for local processing as well as local application deployments.
• WaziCloud: IoT Cloud Platform with open dashboard and Open API for IoT application development.
The Waziup Cloud platform currently has around 1200 registered users. More than a thousand pieces of the hardware platform (WaziDev) has been produced, and a possible commercialization is currently underway as an exploitation of the project.

A complete “Smart Village” was set up in Sanar, a village located near Saint Louis, Senegal. We set up a technical infrastructure in Sanar, mainly consisting in several WaziGates covering the entire village. This technical infrastructure opens up enormous potentials in terms of new/innovative applications for the population of Sanar, for the University and the student population. The Smart Village also includes a “living lab”. It is a space for collaboration between the different local stakeholders. The activities in the living lab range from meeting with farmers and herders in the area together with solution developers and project leaders, to setting up a commonly agreed strategy for implementation. The presence of the incubator, the interaction with local authorities and the support of the university are all factors that facilitate progress in innovation and farmer involvement.

Under the innovation program the following results are achieved :
• Design and development of the two WAZIHUB innovation competitions, with partner hubs in 6 countries.
• 14 “champion” startups incubated in our program
• 13 Webinars have been organized to support the entrepreneurs for capacity building.
• Organization of 2 more bootcamps in Uganda and Tanzania, leading to a total of 15 bootcamps.
• We organized two innovation competitions in order to select the best IoT innovation as well as engage communities.
• 49 videos featuring tutorials, courses, demonstrations are been published.
• We published two high-quality magazines.
• More than 3000 followers in social media

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

In order to secure the exploitation of the projects results beyond the completion date, an association was created in 2019: Waziup e.V. It is a non-profit organization promoting cutting-edge technologies and capacity building toward emerging countries. WAZIUP Open Source IoT and Cloud platform aims to accelerate social innovation and empower local IoT entrepreneurship. We are engaged in IoT capacity building for startups and entrepreneurs via bootcamps, workshops and hackathons; enabling them to build low-cost and innovative IoT products.
WaziHub created the “Champions” program, which was used to follow 9 startups among the winners of the competitions. Some startups, such as “AgriTechs” already sold some of their products, in their case IoT-augmented hydroponics unit. We expect those startups to continue to develop after the end of the project. In particular, the “champions” startups will be included in the follow-up EU project Hubiquitous.
During the course of the project, we organized numerous hackathons (more than 15), competitions, webinars, training sessions… Those were all occasions for participants to acquire more competencies, which can be put to good use. WAZIHUB target three main users groups for the uptake of the results:
• Developer and engineers who benefited on the training course and capacity building programs. The developer and engineer can continue using WAZIHUB platform and Do-it-yourself technologies, as they are released as Open Source.
• Entrepreneurs and start-ups that can use the WAZIHUB technologies for rapid IoT application prototyping. WAZIHUB MVP prototyping program is designed for entrepreneur and startup to benefit on rapid application prototype.
• Tech-hubs and innovation hubs will uptake the project results though the incubation of start-ups, with a defined business and strategic plan. WAZIHUB defined a clear business model for the HUBs and entrepreneur so that the idea can be self-sustained.

WAZIHUB contributed in addressing the region’s problems, through the technological support to startups. WAZIHUB supported startup in the following domains: Smart Agriculture, Wildlife, Health, Smart Cities and Industries. For instance, its startup “PregCare” built a device to closely monitor the health of pregnant women. In total, 36 MVPs were developed, and 9 startups were included in the WAZIHUB “champions” program.

brochure1

WAZIHUB KPI

WAZIHUB Fyler

Flyer

Brochure2