Patience Makwele
Young innovators have raised concerns over limited funding, intellectual property challenges and difficulties accessing industry support, saying these remain major obstacles to turning research into marketable products.
The concerns were raised in Windhoek during the National Student Research Symposium, where student researchers, academics and industry representatives discussed ways to turn research into practical solutions and commercial opportunities.
Kholofelo Makhubupetsi, a 26-year-old postgraduate agriculture student at the University of Mpumalanga in South Africa, said developing an innovation required more than a promising idea, as young researchers also had to secure resources, protect their intellectual property and balance academic responsibilities with building a business.
Makhubupetsi co-developed CSK Aqua, a solar-powered, real-time water-monitoring device, through her involvement with CSK Environmental Consulting.
The innovation was developed to make water-quality testing more efficient during fieldwork, including work involving mines.
Her entrepreneurial journey has included recognition among the MTN Top 40, reaching the top 30 young African emerging entrepreneurs and winning the existing-business technology category at the 2025 EDHE National Finals.
However, she said recognition and competitions were only part of the process of developing an innovation.
“The greatest value of a competition is not just the prize that it gives you, or the prize that you achieve, but also sometimes it’s the feedback that you receive, the people you meet, and the doors that it opens afterwards,” she said.
Makhubupetsi said her innovation was still being refined, with a provisional patent filing initiated as the team worked towards commercialisation or taking the product to partners in 2027.
She said the journey required persistence because resources did not always match the ambitions of young innovators.
“Protecting intellectual property requires guidance. And moving from a promising concept to commercializing it, requires partnerships, funding, and a clear understanding of the market,” she said.
She added that student innovators had to manage research deadlines and academic commitments alongside business responsibilities, making mentorship and industry connections important to turning ideas into practical solutions.
Vitalis Haupindi, co-founder of Namibian education technology venture YYeni AI, told the symposium that researchers needed to take responsibility for pushing their projects towards commercialisation instead of waiting for universities or the government to do it for them.
“The responsibility to commercialize your research is not the responsibility of your university or the government,” he said.
“I think the responsibility is on the individual to pursue and push that their project can be commercialized.”
Haupindi shared the company’s experience developing artificial intelligence-supported learning tools.
In 2024, the team tested its technology with 105 learners from three government schools in Windhoek over three months, without teacher intervention.
He said performance improved in two schools but declined in some subjects, including Business Studies and Chemistry.
The team recognised that it had overlooked the human element of learning and the importance of teachers.
In 2025, it conducted a further study involving teachers in the process. Teachers delivered lessons while learners used the company’s learning labs to practise, receive corrections and repeat tests on the same topics.
Haupindi said the experience demonstrated the need to test ideas, learn from shortcomings and refine solutions rather than assume that a new technology would automatically solve a problem.
Namibia Chamber of Commerce and Industry (NCCI) chief executive officer Titus Nampala challenged students to think beyond finding employment and consider how their research could create opportunities.
“We are really moving from a place where our graduates are saying, ‘Where can I find a job?’ to asking, ‘What problem can I solve? And what opportunity can I create?’” he said.
Nampala said research became transformative when it moved from laboratories, classrooms and academic journals into workplaces and communities, where ideas could become products and innovation could create jobs.
He urged students to consider how their research contributed to Namibia’s development, which problems it addressed, who would benefit and how the findings could be deployed or commercialised.
He also called for stronger relationships between academia and industry, saying the country needed researchers who could develop practical, scalable solutions to complex challenges.
UNESCO head of office and epresentative to Namibia Eunice Smith cautioned students against relying on artificial intelligence without checking its output, warning that AI systems could produce false information and fabricated references.
“Using AI is not dishonest. Hiding its use or failing to verify its output is,” she said.
Smith urged researchers to disclose how they used AI, verify generated information and protect sensitive research data. She also warned that the limited representation of Namibian languages in AI systems could result in local communities being misunderstood or excluded.
