Innovators’ Summer Schools

The Innovators’ Summer School (ISS) is an initiative of UNECA (United Nations Economic Commission for Africa) and is a strategy aimed at fostering the economic development of Africa by stimulating biomedical innovation and improving higher education.

The first exploratory summer school was held in Kampala (Kyambogo University) in 2012. During this event the participating universities formed the Africa Biomedical Engineering Consortium (ABEC) with the mission of bringing excellence to BME education in Africa.

Since then, an the ISS is annually hold in different ABEC universities, where students, technicians and lectures are involved in one-week intensive courses on specific topics:

• Introduction to biomedical devices (2013):
• From making to marketing (2014)
• Application of mobile phones in healthcare product design and development (2015)
• Biomedical and Clinical Data and Informatics for Development in Africa (2016).

In 2017, with the starting of the UBORA EU project, the School were organized in liaison with the UBORA consortium:

• UBORA Design School 2017
• UBORA Design School 2018 
• ABEC Design School 2019
• Design Bootcamp 2020 on COVID-19
• ABEC Design School 2021 – Digital Edition