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A team of students from the National University of Science and Technology (NUST) walked away with top honours at he Innovation and Expo Conference in Bulawayo, after unveiling Ypotera, a smart mining safety system designed to protect the lives of small-scale and artisanal miners.
Their innovation, which clinched first place under the Environment Conversation category and earned them a $5,000 cash prize, offers a low-cost, AI-powered solution to monitor hazardous underground mining conditions in real time.
“We realized many small-scale miners still rely on risky manual checks after blasting. Some even send someone down in a bucket to test if it’s safe to re-enter. That’s a death trap,” said Khudzai Zhuwaki. “Ypotera is built to change that.”
By Ruvarashe Gora
Zimbabwe’s mining sector contributes nearly 12% of GDP, and over 60% of the gold delivered to Fidelity Printers comes from small-scale miners. Yet, many of these workers operate in unsafe, poorly monitored environments, often without access to proper safety equipment or data.
Ypotera aims to solve this by using a compact device equipped with sensors for temperature, humidity, gas levels, and air pressure, along with built-in cameras. When deployed manually for small mines or via drone for larger operations, the device continuously scans the underground environment and relays data in real time to a mobile app.
The system uses IoT and AI to analyze underground conditions, removing the need to send humans into unstable tunnels. It’s a potentially game-changing development, especially for artisanal miners who lack the resources of large-scale operations.
The Ypotera team is now exploring partnerships with mining associations to pilot the system in high-risk zones, believing that digitizing mine safety could drastically reduce fatalities in the sector.
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