NEW YORK (June 18, 2025) – The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) has announced the regional cohort ventures joining the 2025 ASME Innovation Showcase (ISHOW), the prestigious international accelerator of hardware-led social innovation. Eight social ventures from throughout Africa pitched their innovative solutions and participated in an extensive design and engineering review with expert judges on June 10-12 online. Three ventures were selected to join the 2025 ISHOW cohort and receive seed grant awards and technical support to help bring their impactful innovations to market.
These 2025 ASME ISHOW Africa ventures’ innovations provide affordable, sustainable hardware technology solutions to agricultural, energy, and healthcare challenges. They are:
- CIST East Africa Industries Limited (Kisumu, Kenya) for its “CIST-Second Generation Bioethanol Fuel Micro Distillery System” – a solution capable of converting waste cellulose biomass including sugar cane bagasse and water hyacinth into 95% ethanol, blended and stabilized as a cooking fuel and transport energy
- I-Dress (at CAMTech Uganda-Mbarar, a University of Science and Technology) for its “I-Dress” solution – an affordable, sterile wound dressing made from gauze infused with honey and olive oil, designed to prevent infection and accelerate healing for post-cesarean wounds in low-resource settings
- MariTest Africa (Kampala, Uganda) for its “MariTest” – a non-invasive, AI-powered diagnostic device for rapid malaria detection and monitoring designed for frontline health workers in remote settings without access to lab facilities.
The 2025 ISHOW cohort will be invited to participate in the annual ISHOW Bootcamp in the winter to receive an extensive and customized design and engineering review by experts curated to guide them as they scale to market. They will also receive design services to support their product development. They become part of the ISHOW alumni network, an international community of hardware innovators and stakeholders with exclusive access to experts and resources.
The ASME ISHOW India event was held in April, and the ASME ISHOW Americas, a virtual event, is scheduled for July 29-31. Three ventures selected at each event will join the ISHOW 2025 cohort.
ASME is grateful to its implementation partners around the globe, including The Lemelson Foundation for its continued support of the ISHOW and a multi-year strategic investment in ASME to support the hardware impact innovation system. Learn more about ISHOW’s global impact in this dynamic dashboard.
About ASME ISHOW
The prestigious ASME ISHOW hardware accelerator is open to individuals and organizations taking physical products to market that will have a positive social and environmental impact and that improve the quality of life around the world. ASME annually matches up to 30 carefully selected innovators/ventures with appropriate engineering experts to ensure that the proposed hardware solutions are technologically, environmentally, culturally, and financially sustainable. To date, ASME has provided support to over 250 startups from more than 35 countries to solve critical quality-of-life challenges for vulnerable populations worldwide. ISHOW alumni have developed affordable devices to address key issues related to clean combustion, crop threshing, fetal health, food waste prevention, health diagnostics, safe drinking water, and many more that advance the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals.
ASME ISHOW experts and facilitators include domain experts in research, sustainability, mechanical engineering and product design, manufacturing, startup financing, supply chain, and business strategy, representing industry, nonprofit organizations, and academia. These subject matter experts provide technical and strategic guidance based on ISHOW’s five key pillars: customer/user knowledge, hardware validation, manufacturing optimization, implementation strategy, and impact. For more information, visit https://www.asmeishow.org.
Follow the journeys of ISHOW alumni including GenH, PlenOptika, Himalayan Rocket Stove, SAYeTECH and others here.
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About ASME
ASME helps the global engineering community develop solutions to real-world challenges. Founded in 1880 as The American Society of Mechanical Engineers, ASME is a not-for-profit professional organization that enables collaboration, knowledge sharing, and skill development across all engineering disciplines, while promoting the vital role of the engineer in society. ASME codes and standards, publications, conferences, continuing education, and professional development programs provide a foundation for advancing technical knowledge and a safer world. In 2020, ASME formed the International Society of Interdisciplinary Engineers (ISIE) II & III LLC, a new for-profit subsidiary to house business ventures that will bring new and innovative products, services, and technologies to the engineering community. For more information, visit www.asme.org.
About the ASME Foundation
The ASME Foundation is the philanthropic arm of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, supporting an array of programs in three core pillars: engineering education, career engagement, and global development. With the goal of empowering tomorrow’s technical workforce, the ASME Foundation advances equitable access both to professional opportunities and to engineering innovations that improve quality of life. For more information, visit www.asmefoundation.org.
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