 Welcome back to the E-Circuit, the only place to turn up your weekend on Mickey Town as an Ipatat Mika underscore Kenya on every social media platform and of course DJ Neshke is waiting for your request at DJ Neshke. The question of the day, it's because it's with regard to tomorrow being Mother's Day May 10th. How would you show appreciation to your mum? Let us know at www.youtube.com for a channel using the hashtag E-Circuit next up is an interview with some innovative guys. It's a partnership between Meru University of Science and Technology and, of course, nine multi-technology innovations. They just created something really interesting with a fight against COVID-19. You remember just a few weeks ago the CS of Ministry of Health challenged the youth Agasama. The youth need to do something. It's equal to the other guys, let me call them the other guys as for now who are fighting COVID-19, he was challenging the youth as well. So we have a few friends of the ISAC is here if you can introduce yourselves. Come on number four is yours. Okay, thank you very much. My name is Cezra Bundy. I am the Chief Operations Officer of Nite Technologies. I'm here to talk about the partnership between Nitec and Meru University. It's called COVID-19. Thank you very much. Thank you. I'm Bundy. I should say I'm an engineer Bundy. Ya, these things are hand. Ya, I'm the CEO of Nitec and we're here to talk about COVID-19 and innovations that youth can do to change the landscape of economics and operations in Africa. And now let's talk about this platform, the COVID-19. Yes, COVID-19. I'm pronouncing it properly. Yeah, perfect. COVID-19 platform. What is it exactly? COVID-19 is a word coined from COVID-19 and identification. So you have COVID-19. It is a digital marker and identifier of all the subjects of mass testing. Much later after we have a vaccination it will be an immunization passport. Just like your yellow fever passport. Sorry, yellow fever card that you know if you want to live in any African country you need to have that. What it does, it makes life easy for the government to enforce measures against the spread of COVID which everybody needs to do anyway. And then makes it measurable. Then makes it easier for the public to partner with the government in the fight against COVID-19. Maybe a case in point if I could throw that in. Right now restaurants are supposed to be open. And they are supposed to go for, you know, all the operators need to go for a COVID test. You know, it's expensive. It's around 10,000 shillings for each test. You go there, a lot of writing is done, you know, you fill forms and then you are given a result form. And that's it. And that's it. That can be forged. Everybody agrees. Oh, this is Kenya, you know. River road. Yeah, anything can be forged. True. And then you can lose your results. What happens? You have to go back for another test. Another 10,000 shillings. Another 10,000 shillings. How much does, you know, a cook, a waiter at a restaurant make? That's almost like the whole salary. Probably a whole month salary, exactly. That's not enforceable. It's not even sustainable. It's not realistic. It's not realistic. Our truck guys are supposed to be tested every 14 days, you know, if you are crossing the border. That means every 14 days you need to go for a test. Right now we are on the 44th day of the curfew. That means every fourth night they should be having around six results slips of COVID results, you know. Also not sustainable. Very soon they are going to start working around with files so that they've been tested. This shows that all those things are compressed into this. We had an easily lockdown. You know, just the other day. And almost half the residents actually migrated. Migrated. Exactly. We saw that situation. It was very tricky. Yeah. And they're everywhere. That beats the logic of locking it down anyway. Because if almost half moved, then why does the government need to lock it down? You're not really controlling the spread of COVID. Yeah. So you need to be able to identify them. With COVID, you're able to walk to any restaurant into Amatatu. You know, if a government says you must produce this card, just scan. You know, a camera. It's a 1.2 second thing. The results come up. Where you leave comes up. It's something I can demo if much later probably in the show. The results come up and there you leave. So anybody that moved out of a lockdown area is able to be identified. And you just shop. You could have tested negative here. But since you come from an area that is flagged as red, you should be taken back. What's important in place. That's the only way the government can measurably enforce anti-COVID measures. And if that is done, we believe there's a statistical model that the investors have been working on. We believe within the next 43 days, we will be able to start opening up the economy. Right now, we assume everybody else is COVID positive, which is not true. Probably an entry percent of Kenyans. Is negative. Are negative. But since you don't know if this guy is positive, we have to lock everything down. It beats the economical cycle. And we have no strategy now to open up. China has opened up. South Korea is opening up. Some parts of the U.S. Florida, I think, opened up some two weeks ago on a Friday. Those people have been able to do that because they have a way of marking and identifying people that are infected. Those that are not infected. And to also raise alarm when somebody shouldn't be in circulation is actually in circulation. In an easy, smooth, favorable and measurable manner. And that's what we ought to do here. With COVID-19. With COVID-19. With regard to now the tracing and the tracking, we're going to talk about the implications of security over people's data later on. But before that, I would like to discuss the partnership now. How did you guys get in contact with Nitech? So what's the partnership about? What did you come into the fold? I'll start by saying that Nitech is a tech company. It's a fairly young tech company. We have a number of innovations. They are quite a number. Just like engineer Bundy said, they are over 40. And we got into a consortium with Meru University to enable, accelerate these innovations, involve the students, involve the administration, involve the tech departments in availing these solutions through the youth in a more streamlined manner so that they can be able to go to the public faster, easier and more effectively. And I'll narrow down to the COVID-19 specifically. We figure that if we go through the university, if we get into a consortium, a partnership, a working partnership, a corporate partnership with the university, it will be able, it will be possible for us to avail this solution in a faster and more effective way, especially during this period. For instance, if you consider the financial beating of specifically African countries are taking due to the COVID-19 pandemic, actually, one last organization is projecting as the very least a recession or even a financial depression post COVID-19. So we found it timely to partner with the university to avail this solution promptly. To hasten? Ya, to hasten during this period. We also found out that the university is willing, it has the facilities, it has the workmanship and the facilities generally to... and the good will to make sure this innovation sees the light of day. So I think Bundy, engineer Bundy will add more information on that. Okay. Thank you. Dina, see what chance you have to take all the beating. So by the way, he's my bro, my kid bro. So it's something we've worked together with and we have many other guests behind us. Now, how we got into the partnership with Meru University? Meru University is an innovation-led university. Actually, the chancellor, who is Dr. Mwangi, gave a personal donation of 100 million set up an innovation center at the university and it's complete. So being an innovation-led entity and seeing the experience we had, we saw the need to come together to use the tech they have, to use the facilities they already have. I think only two other universities have similar facilities as Mwangi and JK Yot who are already working on big government projects, tech projects. Using the facilities they have, we help them transform innovations at the university, being done by the kids and the lecturers into commercial innovations, something that converts into money. You need to earn that healing after all. You need to earn it. Like you said, you earned the title. So the money should come with the title. It has to. So when we engage the leadership players, they are very open people, very futuristic and supportive guys with the good will. And they told us, come on, set up everything, let's do this, you guys come in and you realize also our universities are having a big issue raising money to run entities. So that serves as an IGU, income generating unit for the university. We are projecting within the next two years they should be able to 100% finance all the operations. They may not need funding from the central government. They can do it yourself. Yes, they can do it themselves. If they invest with all the private house and all the countries that are trying to come on to COVID-19, if this runs well, the income is so much that the university can, the university can self-sustain and even probably donate to the central government. And this is the time, this is the time for African Renaissance. It's the fourth industrialization period and it's the use that will lead it. Now with regard to the structure, now we understand it, how you came together, why you came together. Yes. Like you said, you need money to make money. True. With regard to COVID-19, people would assume something like to have the servers now because you're projecting to have a lot of people in your servers so you need a lot of money to buy those servers. Yes. So with regard to funding for COVID-19, how did you go about it? Now each of these two entities put in resources. When you get to a partnership you always have a financial understanding who's bringing what to the table. We noticed the scope. The traffic we're going to get, the scale this thing is getting into, the scale that we have to, the scale of the infrastructure we need to put to handle the traffic coming in. And the first thing we did as a tech company, we went in and bought three servers. Three servers for backup, that's to handle the security. The capacity is like for someone who knows about these things. Okay. They vary. There's one that is at 67 TB terabytes. That's pretty large. Then there's one, the server space now, a cloud server space based in San Francisco, the U.S., which is unlimited. They have that space. They offer to specific companies when you put in, but it's pretty expensive to do that. Then there's one we've put up at the university premises. Not too big, but it handles the local traffic. The local traffic. The local traffic. Let me not disclose that one for preparatory reasons. Because again, you don't want people rushing down there and messing up stuff. Exactly. And then we have unlimited bandwidth. That's something we had to get into. Unlimited bandwidth. And we're hoping to put in redundancy lines. We haven't done that because traffic is not yet as big. A redundancy line that will be able to handle any input given... Just to make sure there's no cup of usage. Perfect. Looks like you're a tech guy. Thank you. To let us learn easy beauty. You feel that in pretty well. Yeah. So raising the money, both entities put in something and we used what we already had, given okay, that's our core business. And yeah, I think we spent up to 10 million shillings already. Yeah. In terms of now the government, because you need the government to be on board with this. Yes. And now let's talk about the Kenyan government before we go outside because this is something that should be applied all over the continent. Yes. But now what about the Kenyan government? How far is the conversation with regard to implementing COVID-19 with the people? Okay. I could like him to go first, but let me do that. Okay. We may not disclose what we are doing with the clans. You realize it's also a security thing. They are procurement and all those. But the clans actually are governments. Governments and counties in Kenya now, those are autonomous entities. So far we are having discussions. They like what we're doing. The minister, the CS for ICT on 21st of April launched actually gazeted a team, a secretary to handle all tech around COVID-19 hosted at the CA, Communication Authority. And we've submitted our innovation. We hope when they do the first budge, the first release on engagement, that should be some time I think this month. They haven't put that up. Hopefully. Hopefully this month. It needs to happen fast because the pandemic is crazy. Ours should be somewhere up there. So we have, we've used all the channels that the government puts in for such things to be onboarded onto the government and it's doing pretty well. Though probably to note, it has to, some are coming in parallel. There are other countries, African countries are actually running so fast. They talk about let's pattern on these, let's throw these out and all those things. And how did they get to know about COVID-19? They are the countries now and get in touch with you guys. How the other countries got to know about COVID-19? I'll start by saying personal links, personal networks and also the university links. You're big guys, you know presidents. Not really, we can't say that. I'll say personal networks. The CEO is well travelled, I'd say. And he's been around for quite some time in the tech industry. Also the university has solid connections and networks, corporate networks. And we figure that if we can leverage upon the university networks. The personal networks as well? Sorry. And also the personal networks? The personal networks. The university for instance has a solid connection with the financial institutions in the country. I might not be able to maybe mention exactly which one, but through the links of the universities we have been able to talk to financial institutions in the country and corporate organizations out of the country including NGOs and have been able to bring them on board and maybe explore the possibility of this innovation and the possibility of us taking it out of the country in a more solid way using a financially viable model so that we can get financial stance. This is really nice. I like the innovation. I like the idea and it's very applicable and we really need it. Like you said we need to hasten that movement so that you get the support you need. With regard to now we understand you need the government support but also the financial support is needed. Just in case you need more backup servers and all that Angel investors are you welcoming them or is it just Meru and Nitech along with the governments and so what if someone comes right now for instance and they say like a shaktank shaktank type of thing I like your idea I'm going to fund the idea make sure it's up and running but I want like 60% of the company what would you say? Okay You took it to a whole new level. Now we are welcoming all those entities that are willing to come in and partner because if you want to if you want to slaughter a cow you don't do it alone you need all these people somebody to hold the legs somebody to hold the the head for it to be successful and fast actually we have a few they are called venture capitalists who have come on board we are actively dealing with a few of them but not on not on the shares basis you see for the youth that's what that's partly what kills us you come in you want a quick car you want a quick house at a muscle of bread you're not looking at the long game yes at a muscle of bread you know something somebody comes and tells you come on I'm giving you some you know $10,000 and you leave everything 60% that means the guys controlling the company the employee of the guy when it's your innovation when it's your innovation you bear the vision probably something I could talk to the youth about in these things look at the long game sitting there he said I've been I've been in it long I'm not a party he made it look like I'm really really old but what we've been doing is we started from university almost the entire team or students in public universities local public universities and we used to do things then we used to work with creating innovations that's why we have a portfolio of around 46 of them with 23 copyrights and we did get this far by taking on board money taking on board venture capitalists so sharks in exchange for money and then moving on you hold it and you keep running now for us we need the support all the support we can we need the favourable support fair partnership you bring in your one shilling you get maybe one share over a period of time not 100% because if Facebook did that come on nobody could ever know Zukaba exactly something time limited that's very smart Nishke you see that's one a time limited share type of thing so that Mutakepata profits you shake off some of them we are losing the ownership of the patent 100% I hope no one is going to watch the E-Circuit and be like I will steal this idea we've learnt over time that there are things to do you see them coming out from other big-tail courses that you can't take to course attend to just or let go so one of the first things we do is patent what you've done actually we do stepped patenting each time our R&D team comes up with something big even if it's on COVID and itself we put in another patent and another patent another patent to show the updates yes and we have a pretty good legal team pretty solid legal team I should mention for instance if you want a brother it look like he could be a really good lawyer he just like that he's pretty relaxed he's a statistician I wish I could be a lawyer that admits I'm a statistician but my twin sister is a lawyer a tough one at that and intelligence runs in the family we could say that we could ask the dad you never really show that's a story for another day that's a story for another day now with regard to COVID like I said it's a very good innovation thank you with regard to the bio for COVID there's applications for more yes in the future after COVID-19 yes such as thank you as I go in you can sell the 9,000 okay I want him to get to my level really soon but it's okay operations guys seem to be quiet and locked up now we've been talking about immunization passports actually you check a random Google online Google search you get the European Union are considering actively asking for an immunization passport before you get this Shenzhen visa you can go to Europe without that passport of course we don't have a vaccine right now but it's something they are looking at right now for you to move is it KQ that took off last yesterday but one and guys are to be tested not sure that you've been tested and all that now after COVID there's something called health hub that we are putting together it's okay it's really really really done we are planning to throw in all these immunization passes into one card like a yellow fever perfect everything else yeah you know this is one card yeah yeah yeah imagine having you have your passport you have probably a visa for the country you're visiting then you have yellow fever thing you just like a passport one card yes scan and it fixes everything for you like a lot of the rings one card to rule them all aha that's a good connection I like that idea but now with regard to that one won't it be a bit more difficult because there are people who have some investment those cards like for instance that yellow fever card yeah yeah there are hospitals even that are trying to create a monopoly like where the people who give the best vaccinations here that will last for 10 years so don't you feel like you know you would have to fight what is it? I don't think it will be a competition or a fight or rather a complimentation of what they are already doing you know when you introduce a solution which is more efficient and effective it's only my but it's tuna jua kunawale vichuangumu yeah kunawale vichuangumu but tuna jua sasa it will be upon them to come on board because I don't use the word selfish or short-sightedness or myopic it will be a show of selfishness not to come on board as a platform which gives you a solution because you feel competition you'd rather come on board as a partner to compliment the solution if the solution is truly an effective and more efficient solution for instance it is because I remember I lost that yellow fever card like the first after going to Tanzania I came back with it so you know it's really good I don't have this card that you can put in your wallet yeah it is difficult to authenticate the yellow fever exactly because like we said the easy karatasi you can just go to river road exactly and you have your pass all the time no matter what you get to losing this card there's a number there yes tell us about this number so that we really see the efficiency of COVID-19 because whether you have the card or not if you have this number stored somewhere like your Google Drive or something you can still get access to your records how does that work no this way it works first and foremost there's something called a reverse efficiency this card is not good because it's a card it's good because it's linked to a server somewhere actually if you photocopy this card you'll use it as though it's the original card what matters is the info behind the code use your phone anybody's phone you don't need to download any special application use your phone and your camera scan it it gives you all the data you lose this card if you have the photocopy do that if you don't have all those but you've cramped this code up here you can see the number up here it's alphanumeric you give the number right now anybody on TV can can go online go to covidand.id get this code right now type it in there you'll get the results testing results and everything else actually the effective date of the results to a microsecond so we don't want to lock people down to you must have this physical thing you can't pass through personally I've been quarantined in Ghana once across the Kotoka International Airport and it was hectic to move around and it was just you are lost and it's embarrassing very embarrassing I was doing something for the UN and it looks really bad on the UN organization if I had this number I could have given them the number not that I did have a valid yellow fever cut I had an actual lifelong yellow fever cut but they had no way of saying it's fake or not probably it's my small body oh this guy shouldn't be trying again so with the number they deal with the server and you get all your information yes this is something that really needs to be implemented really really soon young guys doing great things for our country you know when you don't touch bears ya trailblazers you know a funny thing okay it's funny depending on the side you're looking at nobody will laugh because of the people who are paying lights and electricity here they could do manando it's supposed to be implemented and circulating do you think this can come into the fold of that and be used somehow as an identification thing as well ya definitely you know huduma number the idea behind huduma number was to give a unique identifier that links all your other cards you know all the other items you know your NHIF, NSSIF ID, BADS, all the services all the services so with regard to like how you're planning to implement all those services into one but now it's more like data collection and showing the results whenever need be so do you think this can actually be the next huduma number type of situation not just revealing information and stored data and actually helping someone connect to all the services using that number and that back ya definitely we have that in mind and that of course remains solely on the client from our side now the client is the government they love their own tours terms of reference they'll say oh come on we like the card or we like this and that we need you to add this even if they say we need you to add the ID of your grandmother we will do that we are techies and that's what we do really client puts in there we put it but this is scalable big time it can actually even have all your results but as for now making sure COVID-19 is eradicated within the country ya you need to focus right now we are into COVID-19 ya yes yes we are into COVID-19 thank you so much for coming I'll say this when you the first question was is this an app I'll maybe like to upload this misconception that every other tech platform which is coming up should be an app I don't think it's a general misconception in the public especially among young people not every platform which offers a solution a tech solution should be an application should be made into an application how often do you use your Safarekom application not very often the public is more receptive to an easily accessible service I like his response to you because it's like he's saying not everyone goes on Instagram it's like there are people who read books ya I like that perspective an application is tedious most people might not be able to accept it and in terms of the constant updates but with servers the backend you can control it individual phones and making sure they are updated I like that maybe last words to the people I should talk about the change thing you talked about of course business fast and foremost a business we are in the business of making money but we don't make money we make money by solving problems pandemics like right now we have this pandemic now the guys for yellow fever for example there are people that are hugely invested it's a big thing you have to pay around 3,800 to get your yellow fever something I could say to them I want to say they are the others as you said you can never stop change it's inevitable and again this is an African renaissance give the youth that space let them show you how it's done you can always scale up Netflix was there when we had all these things it has scaled up to a tech company one of the biggest video thing in the industry so this is the future either you come in peace or we come and pass with you just to gain the mob job but there is no concatting yeah nice thank you so much thank you I wanted to inquire whether maybe you could do a demo that's a really good idea if you can have camera yep so you can see this is my phone this is the card I switched on my camera no more camera and look at that within that's 1.2 seconds we have the results with no application download no application download just the camera you can use it on your phone grain of course this person is negative but you go down to show the name the details you'll see the effective date effective date is do you mind doing it just once more okay let me do that again if you can have the close up camera number 4 you see that this is just a normal phone that's the coveted card and the number and a normal camera phone so I put on my camera with no application just the camera no application that's the camera and I hope you can get that okay and immediately the results immediately you get your results nice the face of the person so just in case you stopped by any copy let's say you moved yes actually they don't even need to touch you know a guy taking your ID card and giving it back are you sure I'm not giving you covid exactly nice and like that implementation as well do that from a distance if you don't want to show it to him type it in and you have it you can do it on your phone and show him now the effective date is something about the effective date you can be tested today and the same evening you get covid you can have your own threshold just like the truck drivers have their fortnight every two weeks they have to be tested over here you can say nobody is allowed to come here if you are not tested within the last two days for example so when the guard at the door does that and checks and sees you see the effective date here and sees it's beyond the so the effective date also determines like the effectiveness yes when were you last tested when were you last tested depending on the traffic of where you are and then down here we have let me so that we link to the it links to the google maps sorry just a quick one down here it shows where you live you see like as you scroll down you see the pin of where you live now when you are tested look at that pin is it something you input automatically or manually when you are being tested probably I should do that also here let me just do it a quick one you indicate where you come from right they ask you for your residence and I'll do that the medics will see something like this there's a lab module there's a testing center module this is the sample collection points the lab module is where the samples will be taken to be tested then there's the instant verification point behind this sorry behind this there are forms that are filled very short forms 20 seconds the lab one is only three things to be filled a quick photo and negative or positive declared negative or positive when you declare your residence the server automatically picks it up this helps if let's say you live in Kilimani for example and you tested negative yesterday but today evening the government declares Kilimani and no goes on I read a hotspot for whatever reasons probably there's more proliferation of the virus they declared to be locked down and you'd say to disappear and pass over to Woodley short distance migration you can't actually you can't get into a matatu you can't get into any supermarket without producing your card so you produce your card and boom because of your location you should be taken back or quarantined because you're spreading the virus that could have helped the Isli problem because no one knows where those guys are probably came from Isli and I'm living in a lodge in here you can never tell I should be actually locked down because the government had good reasons why Isli needs to be locked down I have nothing against Isli guys but for that I'm here it means I'm interacting with I don't come from Isli, I'm just an example so with this the government will be able to have a stronger arm to be able to control you put in, this is what they say in law if you put in a measure it needs to be enforceable enforceability means you need to be able to what if this doesn't happen what should I do? Right now for the people that moved out ask the government to bring back those people it cannot identify you especially in terms of enforceability having these conversations the other day with one of my friends I know Isli very well actually so if you say I'm going to block Isli from garage to St. Teresa's but don't let that happen because the government has opened up so it's very tricky but with this innovation innovations like COVID-19 although I wish this would become number one not just with COVID-19 but with all the other applications we just discussed so is there any parting shot before we conclude? parting shot these African organizers again, it's time for Africans to rise up I believe we have solutions for the world Madagaskia is doing it we should be doing it also we have what it takes and youth sees the moment ride the tide that's the only way you're going to stand thank you very much Mr. Ezra my parting shot is that every challenge is an opportunity to be stronger and get into innovations and come up with solid solutions right now Africa is at our precipice and it's our opportunity to come out stronger through innovations manufacturing and self-sufficiency and make that money and reduce the amount of dependence of the outside world and I think this is the time and people we have the ability to avail the solutions thank you very much thank you, thank you very much for inspiring a lot of youths who are watching the E-Circuit right now if you want to connect with them and find out more the website is nai.co.ke nai.co.ke nai.co.ke thank you so much for your channel using the hashtag that's on Facebook