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Ugandan young entrepreneurs Sandra Namboozo and Samuel Muyita have won the Community Healers Prize at the prestigious Young Inventors Prize 2025, held in Iceland on Wednesday, June 19.
The Community Healers Prize recognises social changemakers tackling food security, education, and fair working conditions. This win brings a €20,000 (about Shs83 million) boost to scale their work further.
Their innovation, Karpolax, is a biodegradable sachet that extends the shelf life of fruits without refrigeration, a breakthrough that has already helped reduce wastage by over 1 million tonnes and is transforming the livelihoods of smallholder farmers and vendors in Uganda.
Namboozo and Muyita
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Namboozo, 26, and Muyita, 27, were at Makerere University when they conceived the idea to start Karpolax, a plant-based sachet that extends the shelf life of fresh fruit by up to 30 days.
The tea bag-sized biodegradable sachets inhibit enzymes that cause fruit aging.
They used nanotechnology to develop the product, releasing a blend of plant-derived volatile organic compounds (VOCs) to slow ripening, prevent spoilage, and protect against mould, fungi, and bacteria.
Muyita is a civil engineer, while Namboozo is an industrial chemist.
For the prestigious Young Inventors Prize 2025, also known as Tomorrow Shapers, they were the only African nominees in a competition featuring innovators from China, France, the U.S., Sweden, Austria, and others.
Namboozo and Muyita have previously secured support through grants from programmes like MIT Solve, an initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Milken-Motsepe Prize in AgriTech, and the Stanford Center on Longevity.
Karpolax plans to expand to markets like South Africa, Rwanda, and Kenya, which have better-paying farmers and more favourable innovation policies, Muyita said in a recent interview.
He also noted that they are developing new products, including an AI-powered produce quality scanner that uses a smartphone camera to assess fruit quality in real-time, a preservative coating, and an ethylene sensor for tracking freshness during transportation.
The World Wildlife Fund reports that nearly 40% of food produced globally does not reach the market, contributing to food insecurity and environmental degradation. Karpolax helps advance United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, such as reducing food waste and promoting responsible consumption and production.