MIT Technology Review released its 2026 Innovators Under 35 list on September 8, naming 35 young scientists and entrepreneurs from nine countries across artificial intelligence, computing and robotics, biotechnology, and climate and energy.
Four honorees are African: Kenya’s Joseph Nguthiru, Tanzania’s Diana Orembe and Paschal Kija, and Ethiopia’s Loza Tadesse.
The list, now in its third decade, was drawn from 550 nominations reviewed by 44 expert judges before this year’s 35 were selected.
“This list is a great way to explore some of the most promising recent advances in science and tech, and find out who’s behind them,” said Amy Nordrum, executive editor at MIT Technology Review. “These young people are driving real progress and they’re worth watching in the years ahead.”
Past honourees include Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom, Spotify’s Daniel Ek, AMD chief executive Lisa Su and AI researcher Ilya Sutskever, giving the list a track record of identifying influential talent well before it reaches mainstream recognition.
Joseph Nguthiru, 28, was recognised in the Climate and Energy category for founding HyaPak after he and university classmates spent hours stuck in a mass of water hyacinth while boating on Kenya’s Lake Naivasha.
The invasive weed chokes waterways, starves water of oxygen and triggers fish die-offs across tropical regions, including Lake Victoria.
HyaPak now pays local fishermen to harvest the plant, dries it and extracts cellulose to produce biodegradable packaging, including bags for tree seedlings, produce wrapping and packaging for Kenya’s flower export industry.
The company is co-developing materials with a German logistics firm and is in talks to license its technology internationally.
“We’re using a free, fast-growing plant that’s there for anyone to take,” Nguthiru said in his MIT profile. “That’s one way we drive costs down.”
Diana Orembe, 30, also honoured in Climate and Energy, grew up watching Tanzanian fish farmers, including her own uncle, struggle to afford proper feed, some substituted rotting vegetables or chicken waste, stunting fish growth and cutting into profits.
Her startup, NovFeed, collects food waste such as potato peels, pineapple husks and expired fruit from local markets, ferments it with a selected mix of microbes and converts it into protein-rich feed pellets.
The product now serves close to 500 fish farmers at roughly 25% below the cost of imported feed.
A new factory that opened in May increased NovFeed’s production capacity twentyfold and the company has begun converting a fermentation byproduct into organic fertiliser.
“Fish should be a cheap source of protein in Tanzania, but it’s not,” Orembe said.
Paschal Kija, 28, was recognised in Biotechnology for developing a low-cost device to address postpartum haemorrhage, one of the leading causes of maternal death in Tanzania and across Africa, where roughly 200,000 women die annually from complications that better-resourced facilities can typically manage.
After a patient who had travelled more than 60 miles for a blood transfusion could not be saved, Kija and medical school colleague James Kalema designed the Mkanda Salama or “Safe Wrap,” a $70 belt made of elastic foam and medical-grade fabric with a hand-operated pump enabling staff to apply and monitor abdominal compression.
A 2023 study found the device stopped postpartum bleeding in 73% of women within 20 minutes.
Kija’s startup, Afya Lead, has deployed the wrap in 85 facilities across Tanzania and is now running clinical trials with the UN Population Fund and Tanzania’s main government health research institution.
Loza Tadesse, 34, represents a different pathway among this year’s African honourees: an Ethiopian-born mechanical engineering professor now based at MIT.
As a medical student in Ethiopia, she witnessed how the absence of basic diagnostic equipment, such as MRI or CT scanners, limited care in rural clinics.
Her lab has since built a sensor capable of diagnosing pneumonia through a simple breath test and developed SpectroGen, an AI tool that generates multiple types of spectroscopic readings, including Raman, X-ray and infrared from a single measurement.
In testing, SpectroGen’s results matched nearly 700 conventional laboratory measurements of mineral samples.
“I could carry a simple instrument… that brings this whole big lab with me,” Tadesse said.
This year’s four African honourees split into two distinct patterns: home-grown startups solving hyperlocal problems in Kenya and Tanzania and diaspora researchers advancing their work from within elite Western institutions.
