At 25 years of age, engineer Siyabulela Xuza is one of the new young generation of Africans who are committed to developing the continent’s potential through disruptive innovations.
Xuza’s interest in science was triggered in early 1994 when he watched a plane drop election pamphlets onto the rural village he spent time in as a child, a project led by Nelson Mandela to educate the country in democracy.
Siya began a project on a rocket fuel that led to an invitation to the 2006 Nobel Prize Ceremonies in Sweden and that was awarded a first place at the 2007 Intel Science and Engineering Fair – the world’s largest youth innovation fair. In 2008, MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory named a minor planet “Siyaxuza”, found near the Jupiter asteroid belt, in his honor.
Siya has garnered numerous other accolades, including a fellowship in 2010 of the African Leadership Network and is the youngest member of the Africa 2.0 energy advisory panel. As a recent graduate of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, where he pioneered micro-fuel cells for mobile energy (distributed energy that could be used to power remote and rural areas), Siya has returned to South Africa as an entrepreneur with a passion for developing solutions for the energy industry. A student of Mandarin and world music and a fan of the liberal arts, Siya is an enthralling speaker, innovator and thought leader.
