Zero Project Nairobi Day 2: Sign Language Robots, AI Avatars, and 3D-Printed Prosthetics from Africa

From Nairobi's Zero Project Tech Forum: Steven Scott and Shaun Preece meet innovators using AI robots to teach deaf students STEM, digital avatars to interpret sign language at scale, and 3D printing to put custom prosthetics within reach across Africa.

Day two of Double Tap's coverage from the Zero Project Tech Forum in Nairobi centres on communication and care. Steven Scott and Shaun Preece speak with three innovators whose work shares a common thread: using off-the-shelf technology and African-built data sets to solve problems that mainstream assistive tech has repeatedly overlooked.

Maxwell Kamau, Partnerships Lead at ZeroBionic, introduces a Kenyan startup building AI-powered humanoid robots as learning aids for blind, visually impaired, deaf, and hard of hearing students. Their first product is a 3D-printed prosthetic arm, made from recycled plastic, that translates documents and video into sign language, trained on African sign language data sets that automatically adapt to the student's country. Their second product is a Braille-tagged STEM robotics kit designed for blind learners. Every component, from motors to microcontrollers, carries a Braille label so students can identify and assemble the parts by touch. The kit supports coding by voice, sign language, text, or drag-and-drop, and is aimed at learners from age five upwards. ZeroBionic is now presenting its new Braille education hardware, and is seeking manufacturing and distribution partners to reach schools that cannot afford commercial robotics kits.

Winnie Ongiri, Operations Manager at Signvrse, explains how her Nairobi-based company has built an AI-powered digital sign language interpreter that converts speech and text into signing via lifelike customisable avatars. Rather than a standalone app, Signvrse is designed as an API, a foundational accessibility layer that other platforms can plug into. Currently operating at a two to three second response time, the team is working toward 500 milliseconds for genuinely real-time interpretation. Motion capture data is collected directly from deaf community members, and quality assurance is built around ongoing community involvement at every stage. Winnie addresses the displacement question directly: the technology is designed for places human interpreters cannot reach, such as websites and online video, rather than to replace them.

Dr Nick Were, co-founder of Prothea in Kenya, describes how his company is using iPhone LiDAR scanning, proprietary 3D modelling software, and desktop 3D printing to produce custom-fitted prosthetic sockets in under 24 hours. Traditional methods take a week or more, and public facilities can take a month. The sub-millimetre accuracy of the digital workflow produces a more comfortable fit than a plaster cast, and the hub-and-spoke model means prosthetists can travel to remote patients with just an iPhone, send the scan file back to base, and have a printed socket shipped out. Prothea has served more than 700 patients and holds close to 600 scan files that could be used to train AI modelling, a partnership the team is actively seeking. Prothea operates as an implementing partner of Ugani Prosthetics, whose workflow and software were developed through university research in Belgium and are now being deployed across Africa, Asia, South America, and Europe.

The episode closes with news that the Zero Project Tech Forum will continue to Mumbai in September, Tokyo on October 9th, Singapore in November, and Santiago de Chile also in November.

Relevant Links
Zero Project: https://www.zeroproject.org
ZeroBionic: https://zerobionicafrica.com
Signvrse: https://signvrse.com
Prothea / Ugani Prosthetics: https://ugani.org/en/

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