LADS Africa's innovative project on informal sector Integration was voted the best at the Governance Lab MultiCity Challenge.
The award is from UNDP Global Center for Technology in partnership with New York University.
The innovative project involves the development of an application that will be used by nomadic vendors in the City of Mutare to track their transactions Each transaction will be geo-referenced by the coordinates of the place where the transaction took place.
The data is analysed to come up with a heat map which shows the areas where certain type of vendors make most of their transactions. This information will be used by the city in their planning. They will know the appropriate places or areas to install certain type of markets. This helps councils build markets that will not become white elephants which will never be used because they are not hot areas for business.
The Governance Lab MultiCity Challenge called for the submission of innovative ideas in Urban resilience, Informal sector integration and Environmental management. Four cities were selected in Africa and these include Mutare (Zimbabwe), Kano (Nigeria), Accra (Ghana), Kampala (Uganda) and Bahir Dar (Ethiopia).
LADS Africa is a start-up owned by the Harare Institute of Technology under its Technology Transfer Licencing and Commercialisation Centre. Eng. T. Maphosa is the Director of LADS Africa and he is responsible for developing business solutions’ softwares for local authorities. To date, the LADS system is already being used by 20 rural district and urban councils in Zimbabwe.
This company has already established notable footprint in Local Authority administration systems by rolling out a commercial software system for nine local government authorities. It was established through a copyrighted software system developed by HIT in partnership with CLFG. This product is in its initial stages to be deployed in SADC countries as satisfactory results have already been achieved in Zimbabwe.
Commenting on this latest achievement, Eng T. Maphosa said that as LADS Africa, they are delighted to have won this challenge. “It puts us on the map as a start-up as well as a University. We believe in our vision of making African cities smart. This has taken us a step closer to our vision and desire,” he said.