Elly Savatia when he won the 2025 Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation, which comes with a £50,000 cash award.
A Kenyan engineer has won a major
prize for developing an AI-powered app that translates speech into sign
language using lifelike 3D avatars.
The innovation aims to make
communication easier for people who are deaf or hard-of-hearing and address the
shortage of sign language interpreters in classrooms, workplaces and public
services.
Elly
Savatia won the 2025 Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation, which comes with
a £50,000 cash award.
Savatia’s app, known as Terp 360, draws
from a growing dataset of more than 2,300 locally recorded signs developed with
Kenya’s deaf community to ensure cultural relevance and natural expression.
Using motion-capture technology, it offers more fluid, realistic signing than
earlier digital tools.
“I’m totally grateful for this and
it is a testament to the innovative assistive technology work that is coming
from Africa. I’m really looking forward to the excellence that will come out of
Signvrse, the rest of the shortlistees and the African continent,” Savatia said,
according to a statement from the Royal
Academy of Engineering, which runs the Africa Prize through partial
funding by the UK’s Department for
Science, Innovation and Technology.
The award ceremony was in Dakar, Senegal.
Terp 360’s
journey began when Savatia, who grew up in
western Kenya, noticed during a robotics class that 300 deaf students relied on
only one interpreter. The experience inspired him to build an accessible
digital solution. Working with a small team at his company, Signvrse, he designed the app and
collaborated with members of the deaf community to refine its vocabulary and
gestures.
So far, Terp 360 has reached more
than 2,000 deaf users, the statement said. Savatia’s team plans to expand into
the business-to-business market, focusing on education, corporate and
healthcare sectors, while extending the app’s vocabulary and reach to Uganda
and Rwanda.
The £50,000 award will support the next phase of Terp 360.
Each finalist was evaluated on the
strength and impact of their engineering solution, commercial viability,
potential to scale, and quality of the team. The judging panel said they also
assessed how effectively participants applied learning from the eight-month
mentorship programme. This year’s judges included Rebecca Enonchong FREng (Chair), Sewu Steve Tawia, Richard
Wylde FREng, Ian Shott FREng,
Yewande Odumosu, and guest judge
Marième Diop.
“This is exactly what the Africa
Prize is all about. It’s showcasing cutting edge innovations by Africans for
the World,” said Rebecca Enonchong
FREng, Chair of the Africa Prize judging panel.
Three other finalists—Vivian Arinaitwe (Uganda) for Neo
Nest, Frank Owusu (Ghana) for
Aquamet, and Carol Ofafa (Kenya)
for E-Safiri—each received £10,000.
A further £5,000 One to Watch
award, chosen by the live audience, went to Rui Bauhofer of Mozambique for Eco-Plates, biodegradable plates made from recycled maize husks
that germinate seeds once discarded.