Teens Lifting Africa out of Gender-Based Violence & Child Abuse: Bohlale Mphahlele

Meet Bohlale, a South African 16-year-old grade 11 student who invented a device to help women and children trigger an alert when they find themselves in danger.

The S.J. Van der Merwe Technical High School student recently won a bronze medal and a trophy at popular SA science fair, Eskom Expo for Young Scientists for the said device. The device is a small as an earing and only needs to be connected to family and friends’ phone numbers.

Bohlale shares that her father making her watch the TV news from an early age was a big inspiration for her invention, as it helped her become aware of the happenings in her surroundings early in her life.

“At the time I did not understand why I had to watch news. However, as the time passed I was disturbed by the number of women and children who were victims of crime like gender-based violence, human trafficking, rape and other social crimes. I knew I had to come up with a device that will ensure their safety.”

Bohlale Mphahlele

The device, which Bohlale first ideated five years prior, has a camera to capture the perpetrator’s face and send it to the numbers connected to the device. It can also track both the perpetrator and the victim’s movements, thus making it easier for the police to do their job.

For further context, statistics show that femicide in SA is five times higher than the global average. And so, this invention, is a crucial one for South Africa.

Bohlale says she wants to study nanotechnology (the science of small equipment) when she completes grade 12. She is another African teenager going for gold, and we love to see it!