Africa innovates Magazine -AI4DEV - Flipbook - Page 18
AFRICA INNOVATES
B R I A N N D E G WA WA M B U I ( Ke n y a )
DEBUNKING COV
DATA A N A LY T I C S A N D C H AT B O T
Brian Ndegwa Wambui is a 21-year-old second year, Information Technology
student at Dedan Kimathi University, who has invented Rona a COVID-19 specific data analytics chatbot.
H O W D I D YO U S TA RT YO U R
JOURNEY?
I started my journey in programming in High School where
I got very fascinated by Visual BASIC which was covered in
the textbooks. In addition, I experimented a lot with computers and I was often called to
repair the school’s computers,
a task I really enjoyed.
W H AT I N S P I R E D YO U
TO C R E AT E
RONA?
I saw a need to develop a
technology and data ana-
lytics
18 SHOWCASING AFRICAN INNOVATION
tool that could aid in curbing the spread of COVID-19 as
a personal contribution. The timing was also perfect; as
Victor Hugo once said, “Nothing is more powerful than an
idea whose time has come.”
Misinformation: A lot of misinformation was going
around regarding COVID-19 which was causing a lot of
anxiety and panic among people. This was also reflected
among my friends and I started thinking of what could be
done to solve this. I examined the existing solutions: the
WHO Bot and the 719 Helpline and I realized they were
not really user friendly. In addition, I felt they were too
blunt! Consequently, I decided to build Rona. The idea of
the chat interface originated from the fact that most people love chatting and I imagined it would be a great idea
if they could craft their questions the same way the misinformation was being spread, that is, using their own
formulated words,
not selecting their
question from a
list of options.
Expensive
Testing: The costs
of running a – test
are very high and
made worse by scarce
testing reagents and
PPEs. In most instances, several tests have
to be done on a single
sample, to confirm the
accuracy. This cost is the
same regardless of whether
the test turns out positive
or negative. I saw it necessary
