Tendekayi Katsiga is a technology entrepreneur and the founder of Deaftronics. He made the world’s first solar-powered hearing aid called ‘Solar Ear’. He was able to create the solar-powered hearing aid battery charger from a Botswana workshop. Today, his Katsiga’s invention has been on a global scale.
“We came up with the solar rechargeable hearing aid when we realized that most people in Africa and in developing countries are given hearing aids by non-governmental organisations,” Katsiga said in a video interview with Youngpreneur Media.
The innovative idea was birthed from Katsiga’s expertise as an electronics technician, who had just moved to Botswana from his home country Zimbabwe. His cheering inspiration was coined from his meeting with Johnny, a young boy at a local mall, who had requested him to read from a newspaper.
Katsiga discovered the challenge that the 15-year-old Johnny faces in communicating, and how ineffective Johnny’s hearing aid is without batteries. Unfortunately, he afford the batteries that are sold at $1 each.
In a bid to proffer solution to this hearing aid hitch, the idea of Deaftronics came up, and got launched in 2009.
According to Katsiga, he founded Deaftronics as a solution provider suitable for hearing-impaired persons living in developing countries.
Katsiga’s company manufactures affordable solar rechargeable hearing aids in the South African country of Botswana, and distributes them to other parts of Africa and Brazil. “There are 525 million people with hearing loss and 70% of them live in developing countries. So it’s a big market, the market is so huge and impact is so profound,” Katsiga said.
“Most of the inputs to build the product came from other hearing-impaired folks. Solar Ear comes with a warranty for a year, the batteries lasts 2-3 years and we also have after sales service,” Katsiga state’s.
The Deaftronics hearing aid is packaged and sold with a solar charger and four rechargeable batteries that last up to three years. The batteries can be used in 80% of the hearing aids in the market today.
Furthermore, In 2015 alone, Deaftronics reportedly enabled over 3,000 hearing impaired children to attend school and has sold more than 10,000 units in Botswana, Angola, Zimbabwe and South Africa.
In an exclusive interview, Katsiga revealed that Johnny was the first user of the Solar-enabled Ear. “His life has changed for the better, and his goal is to become a doctor and help other hearing impaired people”.
Katsiga reiterates the aims of Deaftronics which are to create affordable products for the deaf, to employ hearing impaired people, and create awareness about the hearing impaired and also train them so that they better integrate into society.
Amid the production of hearing aid, Katsiga was also concerned with the lack of integration the deaf people had with mainstream society. “They faced many challenges and with the spread of HIV/AIDS deaf people were not spared. While there were many campaigns to create awareness, it was not in their language. We produced awareness booklet for deaf”.
“After this the incidence of HIV/AIDS among the deaf reduced 38 per cent to 9 per cent between the 2009 and 2013. When the deaf went to bank-tellers, they did not know sign language, we got the deaf to teach bank-tellers sign language starting with the First National Bank of Botswana, the country’s biggest bank that is also present in South Africa,” Katsiga said.
His company has hit at global stage of inventive development, and has received recognitions from governments in and outside Africa.
He got an invite from a company in Brazil to have a partnership venture in designing and manufacturing Solar Ear to be sold across the South America continent.
Deaftronics has since opened an operation branch in Amman, Jordan. The company also plans to open Solar Ear centers and implement their self-created program called ‘DREET’ (detection, research, equipment and therapy), a tried and tested health care program that looks to solve these problems by taking a holistic approach to winning over the posing challenges.
In 2015, Katsiga won the Social impact prize at the Tech-I Competition. He said: “I am not a scientist or an engineer, but I saw a problem and I wanted to solve it”.
