On 28^th September 2021, the National Council for Science and Technology (NCST), in partnership with Nyarugunga Sector and Zorabots Africa launched the campaign to sensitize against COVID-19 through Science and Technology Innovation by Engaging Robots in sensitizing people to the progress of the Covid-19 recovery journey and to continue complying with government regulations to prevent coronavirus as life gets to near normal.

The event took place at the Health Centre of Nyarugenge and was officiated by the Executive Secretary of the National Council for Science and Technology, Dr Eugene Mutimura, the Executive Director of Kicukiro Sector, the Executive Secretary of Nyarugunga Sector, and the CEO of Zorabots Africa. In attendance, were official authority in Kicukiro District such as National Police and Military officers in Kicukiro Districts and a selected number of Nyarugunga sector citizens who represented others.

The launch was intended to bring something novel in sensitizing the prevention of Covid-19 in line with the ongoing campaign in the City of Kigali Council. The ongoing competition is for all sectors in Kigali City to come up with innovative way/means in sensitizing people to continue complying with government regulations to prevent coronavirus.

One of the mandates on the National Council for Science and Technology is to mobilize funds and manage the National Research and Innovation Fund (NRIF); and to promote science and technology community outreach activities. Through this, Zorabots Africa got an award of 150,000,000 Frw to implement a 4-year project entitled “The use of Smart Robotics in Healthcare for big data analysis to inform decision making in Realtime and to prepare for future epidemics”. As an anticipated outreach activity, Zorobots Africa has offered to help with the competition in Nyarugunga Sector, where they placed Robots in two sites: Nyarugunga health Center and at Legacy clinics.  They have been programmed to give a message to sensitize people to continue complying with government regulations to prevent coronavirus and message of hope to come back to real life soon.

The expected output of this campaign is to have a big number of people willing to comply with covid-19 regulations and being vaccinated as before. Scientists from NCST will be able to measure scientific impact of using the robotics to educate people against COVID 19.