News & Stories

A new way to irrigate crops year-round

Toward the end of 2019, startup Khethworks began selling what the team refers to internally as “version one” of its 320-watt solar-powered water pump. The pump allows farmers in India who rely on crop harvests to feed their families to farm year-round instead of being limited to the four-month monsoon season. In just a couple […]

Inclusive Innovation Challenge recognizes startups improving the future of work

Startups working to broaden economic opportunities around the world were awarded $1.6 million in prizes at the MIT Inclusive Innovation Challenge (IIC) yesterday. The $250,000 grand prize winners were JobGet, a mobile platform that matches low-income job seekers with employers; Agros, a company using remote sensing and precision agriculture to assist small farmers in Latin America; […]

Creating a network of drivers to lift a community

Finding success in a big, informal market of a developing country is a tall task for any new company — which makes Nigerian mobility startup Max NG’s success all the more distinctive. The company is currently disrupting not just one huge market of West Africa, but two. In the four years since its founding, Max […]

From 3D-printed limbs to semi-autonomous race cars

In early October, the MIT International Design Center and the MIT Edgerton Center hosted a panel discussion on “Envisioning the Future of Technology-Enabled Mobility.” Moderated by Edgerton Center Director and Professor of Ocean and Mechanical Engineering J. Kim Vandiver, panelists included Robert Bond, chief technology officer of MIT Lincoln Laboratory; Dan Frey, professor of mechanical […]

Homegrown help: Seeding a culture of innovation in Nigeria

Nigeria may not be known as a global hub for innovation, but officials there hope someday it will be. And they’ve recruited MIT Professional Education to help jump-start the process. In September, more than 80 top federal civil service officials from across ministries, departments and government agencies in Nigeria gathered in the capital city of […]

World-class diagnostics for low-income communities in sub-Saharan Africa

Genevieve Barnard Oni’s iPhone lights up with the same notifications dozens of times each day — but they aren’t from a popular Instagram account or an overactive group chat. Instead, the notifications signal every time a patient is treated at MDaaS Global’s health clinic in Ibadan, Nigeria. Last month Barnard Oni MBA ’19, who co-founded […]

Scaling solutions for the developing world

In 2016, Tanzania passed a bill to cover medical expenses for expectant mothers. But pregnant women in rural parts of the country face a huge obstacle in getting the care they need: reliable transportation. Women in villages that can’t be reached by traditional ambulances have to resort to walking for hours to the nearest hospital, […]

MIT D-Lab awards fellowships to six East African social entrepreneurs

The MIT D-Lab Scale-Ups fellowship program, which offers one year of support to social entrepreneurs bringing poverty-alleviating products to market at scale, has announced its six fellows for 2019. This year’s fellows include the founders of homegrown, high-impact ventures in underserved markets in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. “I look forward to learning from — and sharing with — other D-Lab Scale-Ups […]

MIT receives $30 million to help address energy challenges in Egypt

MIT is the recipient of a $30 million award from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), announced this week at a two-day ceremony in Cairo. The award will support MIT over the next five years in developing a Center of Excellence in Energy at Ain Shams University, Mansoura University, and Aswan University, in Egypt. […]

Vectorly reinvents itself to maximize its impact on mobile learning

It’s easy to make major changes to a startup in the early stages of its development. But when an entrepreneur has invested years into building a company, attracting employees and customers in the process, changing course can be a painful experience. Sam Bhattacharyya learned that lesson firsthand in 2018, a year he calls the hardest […]