Africa-Press – Tanzania. WITH increasing fire outbreaks in schools, Ifunda technical secondary school students have innovated gadgets to detect and give an alert to school management upon short circuit.
Speaking at Ifunda Secondary school during a media tour organised by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, one of the students, a Form Six Student Oscar Metwa, said the innovation would be helpful in averting fire accidents in the school.
He said he decided to come up with the design circuit innovation to help administration in schools to control fire outbreaks that have been causing huge losses.
Oscar, who pursues Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics (PCM) combination, said the gadget has a sensor which detects early signs of short circuit.
It was claimed that students, especially in boarding schools, tend to secretly carry out electricity connections, which is against schools rules.
“It is still at a prototype, but I am still working on improving the innovation so that it can be fixed in various schools to avert increasing fire outbreaks” Oscar said.
The student with a dream of being an engineer said like any other innovations, he has been criticised by some of his colleagues who in one way or another bring in the school electrical appliances like water heaters and phone chargers, looking at him as an enemy.
He said the gadget will be sending information to the school management in real time in case of a fire outbreak or when someone tampers with an electric system that may cause a short circuit.
It took him about six months to come up with the technology, saying he has commitment to support the government in the development of number of technologies.
On his part, Ifunda Technical Secondary School Headmaster, Mr Yusuph Mwagala said the school intends to further develop the innovations by connecting the student with Mbeya University of Science and Technology (MUST), among other institutions.
In another development, a Form One Student at the school, Isaya William, is designing a robot that will assist farmers to spray pesticides in their farms.
“I have developed the pesticides spraying robot technology in collaboration with my fellow students and when ready for use, the application will enable farmers save time as well reduce workload,” he said.
On the use of technology, he said, the robot will be connected to the mobile app through which a farmer could operate the robot.
From the mobile phone, a farmer would be able to make the robot move across the farm and spray the pesticides.
The technology, he said, will be available for trials in the next two weeks, adding that when in use it will boost agriculture, thus transforming small-scale farmers to large scale farmers.
