Angola holds the 3rd edition of Angotic with more than 150 national and foreign exhibitors.
Angotic 2023 – Angola’s International Information and Communication Technologies Forum will be held from June 12 to 14 in Luanda.
Angotic is an open space to debate current, global, and future ICT (information and communication technologies) issues, promote knowledge sharing, facilitate networking for government entities, exhibitors, and experts, and present innovations and industry trends.
During the event’s announcement, opened by Minister of Telecommunications, Information Technologies and Media Mário Oliveira, two 20-year-old Angolan twin sisters, Adama and Awa Dieme, presented their innovative technological project called “Awama.”
This project helps diagnose malaria, an endemic disease in the country, without having to draw blood from the patient.
The high school senior students presented for the first time the device at Fititel – Technological Innovation Fair of the Telecommunications Institute in 2021, the project’s dissemination door.
The device uses red light to detect changes in red blood cells.
Red blood cells affected by plasmodium, a parasite that causes malaria, prevent the passage of this light.
In statements to the Lusa agency, Adama Dieme said that the project took two years of research, initially launched in test at the Cajueiros Hospital in Cazenga, and is currently experimental at the Josina Machel Hospital.
According to Adama Dieme, patients are given the non-invasive test by placing their index finger on the device they created, with results in two minutes, and then the traditional method, with blood drawn from the individual.
“Then a comparison is made between the two results, and it has been matching,” the student said.
Adama Dieme stressed that research continues for the improvement of the project, highlighting the support of the school institution, with some material, however insufficient, appealing to the Ministry of Health and other institutions for more help.
The young student stressed that malaria is a problem not only in Angola but throughout Africa, emphasizing the sub-Saharan zone.
“The disease that causes more deaths in Angola is malaria, so doing a project that will help in the treatment of malaria motivates us the most,” she said.
She noted that the current method is more time-consuming and expensive because “you need reagents to dry the slides, which are reused and can cause a lot of margin for error.”
The research now, stressed Adama Dieme, goes toward detecting, for example, the plasmodium species.
“This will make it much easier because many times when we go to the hospital, we are only told that we have two specimens per field, but we don’t know the type of plasmodium.”
“it is more appropriate to know the species, i.e., which [single-celled parasite] protozoan we were bitten by,” she said.
In addition to financial support, the young students are asking for sponsorship to raise their knowledge in information technology, with an interest in telemedicine.
“The only thing we need at this precise moment are sponsors to put our project on the market, with improvements,” she added.
In his speech, the Minister of Telecommunications, Information Technology and Media stressed that Angotic promises, despite the geopolitical and economic challenges facing the world, “to be a benchmark African technology event, combining the unparalleled content of a forum with a great exhibition, as well as a ‘networking’ opportunity.”
“Therefore, Angotic catalyzes collaboration and competition between foreign and local technology companies and a multitude of partners in the ICT ecosystem,” he pointed out.
With information from Lusa