{"id":1126,"date":"2015-05-20T12:00:03","date_gmt":"2015-05-20T11:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/?p=1126"},"modified":"2016-10-28T13:15:47","modified_gmt":"2016-10-28T12:15:47","slug":"clean-robot-cops-of-kinshasa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/2015\/05\/20\/clean-robot-cops-of-kinshasa\/","title":{"rendered":"Clean Robot Cops of Kinshasa"},"content":{"rendered":"

You may have heard about the humanoid traffic control robots<\/a> in Kinshasa recently<\/strong>. When the news came out, I thought it was interesting. The robot, affectionately known as robocop, can regulate the flow of vehicles and of pedestrians, combining the functions of traffic officer and traffic lights at the same time. I’ve not been to Kinshasa, but I\u2019d guess that traffic there is not much better than in Lagos<\/a> \u2013 so, a robot like this is to be welcomed, don’t you think?<\/strong> But last week I learned something more about this out-of-Africa innovation, and I thought it was worth bringing to the table:<\/p>\n

\"Th\u00e9r\u00e8se<\/a>
Th\u00e9r\u00e8se Izay Kirongozi presenting her traffic robot<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The inventor of this robot is Th\u00e9r\u00e8se Izay Kirongozi<\/a>, an industrial engineer in electronics, and her Women\u2019s Technology Association (Wotech) makes the robots.<\/strong> This is quite an accomplishment to be celebrated if we consider that in a country like the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) only 10.7 percent of adult women and\u00a036.2 percent of men have gained\u00a0a secondary <\/a>or tertiary level of education, and that the DRC ranks 147 out of 187 countries in the Gender Inequality Index Rank 2013<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Obvious as it may be, it hadn’t hit me that a traffic control robot is not susceptible to corrupt practices<\/a><\/strong>. This is also to be celebrated considering that the DRC ranks 152 out of 174 countries included in the Corruption Perceptions Index 2014.