Farsighted
TUT students dazzle Toronto
It’s below freezing and a chilly cocktail of rain and snow has just begun to fall in Toronto, Canada, as a jet-lagged Siphamandla Mqcina and Philanjalo Ndlovu get ready to present their invention to a roomful of strangers from 25 countries.
Mqcina and Ndlovu are final-year IT students from Tshwane University of Technology [TUT]. They are representing SA at the Red Bull Basement University Global Workshop, a platform for students from around the world to share innovative ideas for positive change, the aim being to use technology for good, to improve life for other students.
The four-day programme of intense workshops, masterclasses and mentoring sessions will see the teams present their ideas to an expert panel of developers, technology gurus and potential sponsors.
For Mqcina and Ndlovu, this is not just a holiday project but the opportunity of a lifetime. Neither had left SA before, nor set foot in an aeroplane.
Mqcina says he is very excited and very nervous. “This is a life-changing thing. Not just for us but also for our families and for other young people who want to do technology. Us being here also means that now other people will realise that even in Africa there’s technology and that people in SA can build something with technology.”
Their project came about because of three unrelated experiences of blind people. Ndlovu was already sympathetic to the struggles of the blind to cope in a sighted world because he had witnessed the difficulties faced by his blind landlady. Then on two occasions he and Mqcina encountered blind students on campus. Once, a fellow student physically bumped into them, and their first reaction was annoyance.
“We were walking from one class to another and someone walked into us. When we looked to see who it was, we realised it was someone who couldn’t see,” says Ndlovu. “We felt so guilty.”
Then, during their midyear exams last year, they saw another blind student walk into a campus entrance gate that was usually open but on this occasion was closed.
“Our mission is especially personal for me,” says Ndlovu. “My landlady passed away this year and she was blind. Then it was also seeing the blind students at TUT every day, constantly not knowing where they are going. We want to make their lives easier.
“I spoke to Siphamandla and said, ‘With the knowledge we have, I think we should do something about this’. We sat together and spoke about what we could do and we came up with a solution.”
With their specialist skills in intelligent industrial systems, in June the duo began to build a device that would help blind students.
Now known as C4Me, this gadget, which looks like a cross between sunglasses and a virtual reality headset, helps blind people find their way around campus by using a mapping system. There are two working prototypes, both fitted with ultrasonic sensors that pinpoint the user’s location and destination and then issue voice instructions that guide them while alerting them to any obstacles along the way. The device can also answer calls, read messages and read banknotes.
Ndlovu and Mqcina built the device from scratch, using their own money — about R3,500 in total, some of which came from their bursary funds. They worked on the design in their rooms in Soshanguve and brought the invention into physical being with the help of a 3D printer at Wits University’s Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct in Braamfontein, where they also worked when they could afford the cost of travelling from Pretoria to Johannesburg and back.
“We made sacrifices because we believed in this,” Mqcina says. “When we started working on it in June we didn’t know about the Red Bull competition. We did it because we wanted to help blind students on campus. For us this is personal, and so we gave our time, our money and our energy.”
The pair met only two years ago but quickly established a deep bond, partly because they have been through similar travails.
Mqcina, 21, was born in Winterveldt, Pretoria. The youngest of three children and the only boy in the family, his first encounter with death was at the age of eight. His father died in 2006, leaving him to be the man of the house. But death would visit the Mqcina home again. His mom was sick and the young Mqcina and his two sisters were no longer able to take care of her, so in 2008 they all moved to live with their maternal grandparents in Lethlabile, in Brits, where their mother died. At the age of 10 Mqcina was an orphan in a new town.
Ndlovu, 26, was born in Msinga, KwaZulu-Natal, where he lived with his father after his parents divorced. His father died when he was nine and he moved to Mpumalanga to live with his mother in Kwaggafontein. Also the youngest, Ndlovu has three brothers and four sisters.
After matriculating in 2013, he wasn’t sure what to do and his mother pushed him to sign up for a civil engineering diploma. He discovered that information technology was his true passion, so after receiving his N6 certificate he transferred to TUT to study IT.
Ndlovu and Mqcina met at TUT in 2018, when both were in their second year studying IT.
Mqcina’s grandmother had just died, as had Ndlovu’s mother. They understood each other’s pain and shared the same interests and have been best friends ever since.
As the icy rain falls in Toronto, both say they wish their parents could have lived to see what their sons have achieved. Both have been keeping their siblings constantly updated on their adventure.
They laugh about how they didn’t know much about Canada when they heard they were the South African team chosen to present their idea at the event.
“We used to see [Toronto’s] CN Tower in movies but we didn’t know it was in Canada. We only knew that Drake was from here, but being here and seeing it all in person has been an experience we’ll never forget,” Mqcina says.
Even 20 hours of travel and below-zero temperatures couldn’t put a damper on their excitement. Apart from the thrill of flying and being abroad, meeting students from other countries has been an eye-opener, says Ndlovu. “We’ve been communicating with students from different countries and learning about their challenges. I didn’t know that in the Netherlands they are struggling with water: they have to buy water, they only use tap water to wash clothes, they say their water is polluted.”
They’ve also had the opportunity to share their story with students from 25 countries. During group sessions they realised that they needed to bust some of the myths and stereotypical narratives that still haunt Africa and SA.
“There is an underlying thing, because we are black, there’s that thing that we are those poor kids from Africa and therefore they tend to underestimate us. Some were surprised when we said we have a working prototype and we know seven programming languages,” Mqcina says.
They begin to rattle off in acronyms the different programming languages they know, a requirement at their university.
Each team was given three minutes in each round to present their project. Ndlovu and Mqcina made it to the top 10. In the end, the team from Austria won but the South Africans could not have been happier with how they did.
The day after their final presentation the duo are still beaming. We meet for lunch a few hours before they are due to board a flight, leaving behind the cold and Usain Bolt-like internet speed.
“This experience has been life-changing,” says Ndlovu. “The one thing I would have wanted was for my parents to see me take off in a plane and for them to welcome me back from Canada; to see that their last-born son made it to the top 10 in a global technology competition.”
While in Toronto they were offered a six-month internship in Portugal, for which they are trying to raise funds. They are also looking for sponsors and developers who will help them manufacture and improve their device.
Whatever happens, they both say the experience has shown them that what they once thought impossible is possible.
✼Wagner travelled to Toronto as a guest of Red Bull