UN agency program gives young Zambian innovators tools to turn ideas into saleable solutions

10 Views From Lusaka Province, he applied to join the UniPod’s RootLab Ignite programme and made his way to the Copperbelt for the week-long bootcamp focused on turning early-stage ideas into saleable products. Young Zambian innovative student Emmanuel Njobvu’s perspective began to be shaped by exposure to a more structured innovation environment where he developed […]

10 Views

From Lusaka Province, he applied to join the UniPod’s RootLab Ignite programme and made his way to the Copperbelt for the week-long bootcamp focused on turning early-stage ideas into saleable products.

Young Zambian innovative student Emmanuel Njobvu’s perspective began to be shaped by exposure to a more structured innovation environment where he developed his idea technically and examined in terms of their scalability and real-world application.

Many strong ideas rarely scale on clarity alone, they need structure and support for refinement – this is where the Mukuba UniPod enters the picture.

Through initiatives like RootLab Ignite, the innovation pod strengthens the skills of young innovators like Emmanuel by connecting them to mentors, peer innovators, and world-class equipment to prototype, test, and refine solutions for scale.

On March 23rd, 2026
At 20 years old, Njovu is thinking about solutions to curb the growth of digital fraud.

Mobile money has transformed how many Africans transact and do business. Cross-border and informal traders, business owners, farmers, and urban, peri-urban, and rural communities increasingly depend on it to move money fluidly through economies.

“But this shift has also created new vulnerabilities,” notes the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

“Rising rates of digital scams have left thousands of people exposed, with many losing hard-earned income to cybercriminals.”

Emmanuel began hearing these stories while still in school. He became increasingly concerned about how easily people could be defrauded and started thinking about detection systems and about what security could look like if it were proactive.

His answer is ZED Shield, an AI-powered security system designed to detect digital threats and strengthen cybersecurity infrastructure. At first, he saw it as a small solution. However, that perspective shifted after spending time at the Mukuba University Innovation Pod (UniPod). “Being here broadened how I see it,” he says.

Similarly, Purity Kampamba is another youth niching her way through the UniPod. She brought a different problem into the space, hoping to access these opportunities and facilities for scale, through the RootLab Programme. Her innovation journey was triggered by a three-day water outage in her campus residence. As an environmental engineering student at the Copperbelt University, she started asking questions. Was this isolated? Or part of a broader pattern affecting homes, schools, and industries? Why does it happen? And what can I do to solve it?

Her answer was HydroMind, a smart water management system designed to detect leaks and improve efficiency. However, the journey to this point has not been without its challenges. Mentors pushed her thinking beyond boundaries resulting in her solution changing shape.What she initially believed was the solution evolved as she refined her understanding of the problem.

“Being here has helped me align my vision into something people can understand,” she says. “And something that can actually help people.” In addition, innovating, she believes, “takes strong will.” Young people today face compounding pressures like climate change, poverty, infrastructure gaps, food insecurity. “If we don’t solve today’s problems, they grow into crises tomorrow.”, she reflects.

RootLab Ignite gave her space to test her idea, question her assumptions, and refine her product technically to address these compounding pressures that affects development in Zambia. “Whenever you have an idea,” she says, “your idea is not too small. The simplest ones solve the largest problems.”

For Prince Likonge, the starting point was closer to home. His mother is a teacher. He grew up watching her prepare lesson plans late into the night. He also noticed inconsistencies in how students were taught and assessed across different grades and subjects. In the same grade, different classes were learning different content, and the tests were not always standardised. Mistakes slipped through.

So, at 19, while studying at Kalabo Trades Institute in Western Province, he began building Catalyst. Catalyst is a platform that integrates curricula, lesson planning, attendance, and assessments into one streamlined system.

For over a year, Prince focused almost entirely on the technical build, making interface tweaks and backend improvements. But after joining the RootLab Ignite programme, he started to consider the business dimensions it takes to scale his innovation into a start-up. Topics surrounding market readiness, positioning, investor conversations and marketing, opened his mind on where the journey of Catalyst could lead.

“I expected general mentorship,” he says of RootLab Ignite. “What was delivered was beyond that.”

Instead of abstract inspiration, he found hands-on guidance from people closer to his stage of development, people who understood the immediate hurdles of turning a prototype into a viable product. He now sees how product development and market readiness must move together.

RootLab Ignite which incuated 14 innovators operates at a critical — and often underserved — point in the innovation pipeline. It focuses on ideation, where concepts are still fragile and confidence is still forming. It connects young innovators to mentorship, equipment, structured feedback, and exposure to broader platforms such as ITS Kopala, creating an environment where iteration is expected and learning happens through testing and refinement.

Each of these innovations is rooted in a local challenge and yet they connect to global conversations about cybersecurity, climate resilience, infrastructure efficiency, and equitable access to quality education. While they are not yet scaling across markets, support at this stage is essential as ecosystems are not built through sudden breakthroughs alone. They are built in spaces where early ideas are given time and tools to grow.

Mukuba UniPod is part of the United Nations Development Programme’s timbuktoo Initiative, which places innovation spaces within universities across the continent. These hubs give young innovators space to test, prototype, refine, connect, and eventually scale. Programmes like RootLab Ignite are designed to ensure that innovators like Emmanuel, Purity, and Prince begin their journeys with the right foundation thereby strengthening Zambia’s innovation ecosystem from the ground up.

Rootlab Ignite is one of many initiatives crafted to support the Zambian innovators at different stages of their journey, visit the Mukuba UniPod site to explore more programmes. -UNDP