If you've ever stood behind a bus or an old taxi, you know how uncomfortable it can be. The smoke either makes you cough, irritates your eyes and, over time, can even affect your health, and every day, thousands of vehicles release smoke into the air.
Now, imagine if there was a way to reduce some of that pollution using something as common as farm waste. That is exactly what two 17-year-old Kenyan students tried to do.
The students created HewaSafi, which means "clean air" in Swahili. It is a low-cost filter that is attached to a vehicle's exhaust pipe. Instead of allowing all the dirty smoke to go straight into the air, the filter traps some of the harmful particles before they escape.
The interesting part is what they used to build it.
Instead of using expensive materials, they used farm waste like maize cobs and coconut shells. These materials have tiny spaces that can trap small particles when processed properly. They also added other materials, including steel mesh and spirulina algae, to improve how the filter works.
The filter reduces toxic vehicle emissions by 93.3%, also known as PM2.5, which means extremely tiny dust particles released by vehicles. These particles are so small that they can enter one's lungs or even bloodstream. They are among the most dangerous forms of air pollution.
So, if 100 harmful particles come out of a vehicle's exhaust, with HewaSafi, about 93 of those particles are trapped, leaving only about 7 to escape.
This is proof that Africa is full of people with great ideas.
HewaSafi is still being tested, so it is not ready for everyday use yet, but it shows that young Africans don't just see problems; they also think of solutions.
2026 Bernice Temitayo Olusaiye | Talkafricang.com
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