UCT student part of Sustainathon winning team

Christopher Blignaut, a UCT computer science student is part of the team that took top honours in the 2024 TCS (Tata Consultancy Services) Sustainathon Challenge, a global competition that challenges youth to leverage technology for sustainable solutions.

Currently working towards his final/honours year of a Bachelor of Business Science, Christopher was busy with his third-year examinations when he came across the Sustainathon Challenge through an email from Careers Services. As most of his fellow students were hitting the books, he reached out to two of his high school friends, Talha Niazi, a 4th-year Medical student at the University of the Witwatersrand and Ethan Tilney, a final-year Electrical Engineering student at the Nelson Mandela University.

“We believed that our diverse academic backgrounds and perspectives — shaped by different universities and social settings — would be a great advantage, so after a late night call of catching up, brainstorming and hyping ourselves up, we decided to enter the competition under the team name Nexura,” said Christopher.

Leveraging his medical background, Talha identified the pressing issue of excessive medical waste in South Africa, particularly due to cold chain management (CCM) failures. The team then came up with an energy-efficient and portable cooling solution for storing vaccines in rural areas of Africa, that often lack electricity and reliable cellular connections. Users could control the temperature of the cooling devices via a local network, making sure that vaccines are kept at the right temperature. Notably, approximately 43% of the continent's population lacks access to electricity.

Since then, Nexura has gone through two iterations of the prototype and learned that there is still a long way to go. They have designed the third iteration and are waiting for the competition winnings to come through so that they can begin production.

Nexura presented their solution to a global panel of judges earning their first-place prize which consists of R35,000 and an opportunity for a three-month internship and training programme at TCS in India.

Reflecting on their achievement, Christopher stated “What started as just an idea for a competition has evolved into something we believe can genuinely make a difference. While academics remain our priority, we plan to continue iterating on our product and aim to have a finalized version by the end of the year,”.

The TCS Sustainathon South Africa 2024, held under the theme "Affordable and Clean Energy," attracted over 180 registrations from more than 40 universities. The competition, in collaboration with partners such as Pick n Pay, Geekulcha, University of Witwatersrand, SkillsLab, and the Centre for Student Development, aims to inspire youth to develop innovative solutions addressing energy challenges in Africa.