Johannes Amo-Aye

Ghana

This engineer has designed a hybrid wind-and-solar turbine to provide off-grid electricity to rural health centres where power is in short supply.

In Ghana, as in many sub-Saharan African countries, numerous health centres located beyond the reach of the electricity grid remain dependent on diesel generators. An expensive, polluting, noisy and unreliable option that sometimes forces healthcare workers to work by the light of their mobile phones… Engineer Johannes Amo-Aye, founder of MINAGIE Energy, grew up in the outskirts of Accra, where he witnessed frequent and disruptive power cuts. With support from Ghana’s Ministry of Health and UNICEF, the entrepreneur developed a turbine combining wind and solar power. Called the Fusion Wind Turbine, his off-grid solution has been successfully deployed at two rural health centres in the east of the country, in Adeiso and Asitey. The system provides them with reliable, uninterrupted electricity—more than 6,000 hours of clean energy have already been supplied, helping to ensure around 300 safe deliveries each year—while also reducing their expenditure on diesel. With government support, the solution will now be mass-produced—90% of its components are manufactured in Ghana—and rolled out on a large scale across the country’s health centres and clinics: 25 in 2026, another 60 in 2027, and 100 in 2028. Selected for the 2026 cohort of the Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation, run by Britain’s Royal Academy of Engineering, with the final taking place in Johannesburg in October, Johannes Amo-Aye says the recognition “validates [his] childhood dreams” by bringing “African solutions to African problems” on a continent where more than 600 million people still lack access to electricity.