Innovation beyond borders

Waterlab in South Africa has developed a cost-effective and non-invasive method of tracking and predicting the spread of COVID-19, hepatitis E, norovirus and other infectious diseases through the microbiological analysis of wastewater.

By her own admission, Dr. Gina Pocock, Specialist Consultant at Waterlab, never had any great burning ambition to pioneer a potentially life-saving diagnostic methodology, but she possesses an obvious energy and optimism that drove the South African company’s success.

Honey bees and other pollinators are vital for the planet’s ecosystems and crops, but they are dying out at alarming rates due to climate change, intensive farming and pesticides. A startup in Andalusia, Spain, has a solution: producing hoverflies on an industrial scale. Following an R&D project with Dutch partners, Polyfly is breeding new ways to pollinate more fruit crops.

By Georgia Tindale

Dutch company, Concreet Projectmanagement B.V., joined forces with Ugandan company, Eco Concrete Ltd., to tackle the ever-growing issue of developing sustainable and affordable building infrastructure. Their solution? Creating new recipes for one of the world’s most common building materials: concrete. With the right backing, their geopolymer technology has the potential to go global