Morris Mbetsa is a Kenyan Innovator and Entrepreneur. Morris was raised in Mombasa, Kenya by his grandparents in abject poverty. Morris realized his interest in technology at the tender age of six. “Technology is my life. I never watched football while growing up. My room was full of electronics and wires,” he told Kenyan network K24.
Morris was one of 100 Fellows competitively selected to participate in an 8-week internship in the United States following the Mandela Washington Fellowship academic institute. He interned at IBM in August-September 2014.
First vehicle GPRS immobiliser
Morris developed the first vehicle GPRS immobiliser in 2009. It is a mobile phone-controlled car-tracking system He is fine tuning this invention funded by the Kenyan National Council for Science and Technology.
Kinetic Energy Powered Tablet for Students
Morris has also developed a tablet to be used by students and a device to tap kinetic energy to power them at Tafaria Foundation.
Electronically Powered Drone Taxi for passengers
made history in 2018 when he took a giant leap to the sky with a drone huge enough to fly passengers. The first in Africa.
The Kenyan Passenger Drone is a Vertical Take-Off and Landing prototype created by Morris Mbetsa, a self-taught inventor and electrical engineer. This drone uses four vertical propellers and is flown either autonomously, remotely, or manually with a joystick. The prototype used in the flight tests is not the final design, as the final Kenyan Passenger Drone will have an enclosed cabin. The drones can be used to transport tourists over and around Nairobi, as well as for search and rescue missions.
Burned with the idea of building Africa’s first flying taxi, Mbetsa would have to drop out of college to carve out a strategy for his amazing invention. He didn’t have the patience “to wait for a lecturer to take me through many stages for the next six years.” “That was too long,” he said.
Mbetsa then made the internet his friend, collecting enough knowledge and skill to realize his vision of building Africa’s first passenger drone. He later got exposed and had great training to refine his skills.
“I went to the Notre Dame University in the US for aeronautical training and later on, undertook my internship at the IBM Innovation Forum in Boston,” he told the K24 Tv.
Mbetsa began actualizing his vision after he noticed the people he shared it with – the developed countries – weren’t willing to share the innovation with Africa. They wanted to keep it, a proposal he rejected. The drone taxi is powered electrically and can carry one passenger for up to 25 minutes at a speed of over 120 kilometres per hour with an elevation between 10 and 30 feet above the ground level. “With this drone, you can easily fly from Nairobi CBD to Thika, you, however, need to be trained first and be certified to operate this drone, before you are allowed to fly it,” he stated.
In May 2018, Mbetsa began the unmanned flight tests of the Kenyan Passenger Drone, which proved successful, allowing for manned flight tests to begin in June 2018.
With this project, Mbetsa wants to prove to the world Africa can be home to technological innovation instead of waiting for what is done elsewhere. The drones will be specialized to the African urban and wild environment rather than western or far eastern cities.
Morris is the current CEO and Founder of Mbetsa Innovations Ltd, a society which assist young innovators to turn ideas into products and services. He focuses on producing social uplifting and economic sustaining technology products for Africa. He is constantly expanding his portfolio of simple, inexpensive technologies because his country’s population continues to expand, creating new problems and deepening old ones.
Morris Mbetsa is the Chairman and Founder for Innovators Society of Kenya. As a Washington Fellow Morris Mbetsa seeks to use the Knowledge and connections he shall obtain from the fellowship to further his entrepreneurial ventures into Techpreneur by setting up Innovation and entrepreneurship centers in technical colleges and university that will offer both software and hardware training.
With the help of his other fellows across the country and continent, he hopes to transform the youth and empower them into self-sustaining individuals that can make a difference in the lives of their families.
Excerpts from Articles:
1. Morris Mbetsa Mwero https://www.irex.org/people/morris-mbetsa-mwero
- Morris Mbetsa; the 28-year-old Kenyan inventor who created Africa’s first flying taxi /MOHAMMED AWAL Nov 4, 2019 | TECH & INNOVATION https://face2faceafrica.com/
3. Kenyan Passenger Drone https://evtol.news/aircraft/kenyan-passenger-drone/