On a chilly Wednesday morning, walking into the quiet spacious Resilience Innovation Lab (RILab) on the first floor of Resilient Africa Network (RAN) above Kololo Airstrip, one gets the feeling that they are intruding on great minds thinking up innovations that will propel us into middle income status.

Young men and women are working on their laptops singlemindedly. One group is having an animated conversation at the end of the room. None of them looks up when we walk in. But, innovators feel comfortable among their peers, and this is where Margaret Nanyombi chooses to meet us.

She recently made 26 years and it shows in her playful openness and hobbies. "I relax by sleeping a lot!" she says, laughing.

However, what she does in her waking hours has attracted attention from the global technology world. When we meet, she is in a hurry to begin packing for a trip to Boston, USA. "We were nominated for The Innovation Marketplace happening at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from November 10-12, 2016. It is like a global Owino Market of innovations. I am not only going to participate; I am preparing to win."

The Innovation Marketplace, hosted by the U.S. Global Development Lab, is a competition showcasing talent of students and young innovators who are using science, technology, innovation and partnerships to tackle global challenges.

Thinking up the innovation

In 2015, Nanyombi, together with three friends, invented the BVKit, which a woman can use to self-test for Bacterial Vaginosis (BV), a bacterium that increases the chances of contracting HIV, Chlamydia, Human Papillomavirus (HPV, which causes cervical cancer), and Gonorrhea.

"In March 2015, my friend lost her mother to cervical cancer, which had been diagnosed in the late stage. It was a tragedy because in 2014, she had lost her sister to liver cancer.

Some friends and I decided to find a solution to late cervical cancer diagnosis. We visited the cancer ward at Nsambya Hospital, where we found that it takes two weeks to get a proper diagnosis. We were discouraged."

A nurse advised them to settle for an innovation that could detect one of the causes of cervical cancer, instead of the disease itself. "We discovered BV is dangerous because it does not present signs and symptoms in most women.

When it shows signs, they are similar to Urinary Tract Infections (UTIs) so it is easy to confuse the two. We decided to settle for the BVKit."

To make their innovation more helpful to women, the friends visited communities in Mukono, Katosi, and Nagalama to gather information about the challenges of diagnosing common infections.

"In rural areas, tests are carried out on the basis of signs and symptoms. If you do not have signs, then they assume you are healthy. They do not do the urinalysis test yet it gives accurate results. A hospital in Katosi which did the urinalysis only tested one parameter-pH, which is not enough to give a diagnosis."

Some women in rural areas feared going to gynecologists because their husbands would accuse them of adultery, and the fees are prohibitive.

Instead, they boiled yellow flowers from a certain tree, and sat in the mixture for some hours to ease any pain, leaving any infections to grow unabated.

The innovators decided their BVKit would make it possible for women to self-test regularly instead of waiting a late diagnosis.

By Gillian Nantume & Shiffa Kulanyi

• Africa
• Uganda