Malawi: From Seaweed to Sanitary Pads – Malawian Scientist Pushes to Build Solutions in Africa

“You can have a brilliant solution and still struggle to get it in front of the right people.”

For many African innovators, getting access to the funding, intellectual property systems, mentorship and manufacturing networks needed to turn research into products remains a challenge.

Malawian scientist and entrepreneur Kennedy Mulungu is an exception.

Selected as one of just 10 young innovators from more than 900 international applicants to attend the United Nations Science, Technology and Innovation Forum in New York, the opportunity placed him in rooms where global science and innovation priorities are discussed, and gave him the chance to engage with organisations including the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) on how African biotechnology can reach global markets.

Mulungu  leads Ubhwando  Group Limited, driving sexual and reproductive health initiatives in rural Malawian communities. He is developing biodegradable sanitary pads and wound dressings made from alginate, a natural polymer extracted from seaweed.

His ambition is to eventually commercialise the products locally.

“When I found out that I had been selected as one of 10 young innovators from more than 900 applicants, it was both humbling and deeply emotional. My first thought was Malawi – how far the journey had come, from developing ideas in environments where resources can be limited to having those ideas recognised on an international platform,” he said.

“For me, the recognition was bigger than an individual achievement. It was evidence that innovations developed by young Malawians can stand alongside solutions from anywhere in the world when they are given the opportunity to be seen.”

He believes that his application stood out because he was not presenting innovation as technology for technology’s sake.

His work starts with problems he sees around him in Malawi: women and girls who need affordable, dignified menstrual-health products, farmers facing water scarcity and climate pressure, and researchers whose excellent science too often stops at the publication. Through BioAlgix, he explores how biomaterial science can address some of these challenges. Africa Innovation Brain grew from his desire to help bridge the gap between African research and commercialisation.

Being selected, he said, reminded him that Malawi does not have to be only a recipient of technologies developed elsewhere. “We can build solutions here, validate them here and ultimately take Malawian innovation to the world,” said Mulungu.

From local problems to global platforms

Mulungu’s journey into biotechnology began with problems he encountered in Malawi.

Growing up in Malawi, he saw how health, poverty, agriculture, and access to basic products are interconnected. A solution might already exist somewhere in the world, he said, but that did not necessarily mean it was affordable, accessible, or designed around the realities of communities in Malawi.

His training in Medical Laboratory Sciences gave him a scientific foundation in health and disease, while his work at the Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Research Programme exposed him to biomedical research and the importance of evidence.

But it also raised a question that would shape his career: what happens after the evidence has been generated?

That question became increasingly important as he explored women’s sexual and reproductive health, particularly menstrual products.

For millions of girls across Africa, menstruation can still be a barrier to education. UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report estimated that one in 10 African girls miss school during menstruation, with inadequate sanitation facilities among the factors contributing to these absences.

A sanitary pad may look like a simple everyday product, but access, affordability, waste and the materials used to manufacture it raise much bigger questions about dignity, health and environmental sustainability. His interest eventually led him towards biomaterial science and the possibility of using materials such as alginate to develop more sustainable products.

Through the LEA-WH Innovation & Entrepreneurship Fellowship, Mulungu is developing biodegradable sanitary-pad materials that could reduce dependence on conventional plastic and synthetic components.

He said Malawi remains at the centre of that motivation.

“I want a girl growing up in a rural Malawian community to benefit from science not as something distant happening in laboratories overseas, but as something that improves her everyday life,” he said.

Turning seaweed into a health product

The Kelp Alginate project grew from a deceptively simple question: what if materials used to solve some of these problems could come from Africa’s own natural resources rather than being imported at a cost that many communities cannot sustain?

Kelp alginate comes from brown seaweed; it’s a natural polymer known for being biodegradable, biocompatible, and highly absorbent, which makes it well-suited for both sanitary pads and wound dressings.

The project is intended to address two challenges through one locally sourced material: improving access to affordable menstrual-health products while also exploring more accessible wound-care options for under-resourced clinics and households.

Alginate-based materials let us tackle both with one locally sourced input.

“If we can commercialise this locally, it changes the everyday calculus for a girl deciding whether to go to school during her period, or for a mother treating a wound at home without reliable access to a clinic,” he said. “These are not small things. Dignity and health access, delivered consistently and affordably, can change school attendance, health outcomes, and how communities see what’s possible when products are made for them, by people who understand their reality.”

The project is still at the development stage.

He said that the project is currently in the stage of refining the formulation and preparing for the testing and validation needed before the products can move toward local manufacturing at scale. “This is the phase where support like the LEA-WH Fellowship Innovation Track becomes critical, because it connects me with the technical and regulatory expertise to move from prototype to a product that can actually reach the market safely and sustainably,” he said. “There’s still a distance to cover, but the path is clearer than it’s ever been.”

Turning scientific ideas into products

The move from scientist to entrepreneur has been “one of the hardest and most rewarding transitions of my life,” said Mulungu.

Science trained him to ask questions, test hypotheses, and refuse to make claims without evidence. Entrepreneurship taught him that evidence alone is not enough. A solution must also be manufacturable, affordable, regulated, understood by its users, and supported by a sustainable model.

“The hardest part has been learning to carry both mindsets at the same time: the patience and rigour of a scientist and the urgency of an entrepreneur who knows that real people are waiting for solutions,” he said.

This challenge is particularly important in Malawi.

“We have talented researchers and young innovators, but there is still a significant gap between producing knowledge and turning that knowledge into locally manufactured products, companies and jobs. I increasingly realised that I did not want my scientific journey to end with a publication or presentation. I wanted to understand how research becomes something a farmer, patient, woman or young person in Malawi can actually use,” said Mulungu.

The African STARS Fellowship at Stellenbosch University became a bridge, exposing him to venture building, bioprocessing, product development and commercialisation.

“My LEA-WH Fellowship has pushed that journey further in women’s health innovation,” he said. “Through BioAlgix and Africa Innovation Brain, I am now trying to connect those two identities – the scientist who demands evidence and the entrepreneur who asks, ‘How do we get this solution into people’s hands?'”

“Entrepreneurship has not taken me away from science,” he said. “It has made me think much more deeply about what science is for.”

The barriers African innovators face

The continent has no shortage of ideas, but innovators can struggle to access intellectual-property systems, early-stage investment, manufacturing capacity and mentorship networks capable of connecting science with business. His engagement with organisations such as the World Intellectual Property Organization and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers reinforced the gaps.

“It’s not that African researchers lack good ideas; we have plenty. The barriers are structural. They include limited access to intellectual property systems, difficulty securing early-stage investment, weak local manufacturing capacity and a shortage of mentorship networks that understand both the science and the business of commercialisation,” said Mulungu.

“You can have a brilliant solution and still struggle to get it in front of the right people,” he said.

Mulungu said developing solutions in Africa can also make them more responsive to the communities they are intended to serve. “We understand our own problems best,” he said.

“Relying on imported solutions often means higher costs, longer delays, and products that weren’t designed with our realities in mind. When we develop and manufacture locally, we build economic value, create jobs, and keep the knowledge and capacity here on the continent instead of exporting the problem and importing the fix. It’s also about ownership. African innovation competing globally, on our own terms, means we’re not just consumers of solutions; we’re creators of them.”

Bringing the knowledge home

His journey has taken him from Malawi to innovation and scientific platforms across Africa and beyond, including South Africa, Kenya, Ghana, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia, France and the United States. He has presented ideas in New York, learned about biotechnology and entrepreneurship in South Africa, engaged with innovation ecosystems in Kenya and Ghana, and met people and institutions that he could once only read about.

Yet every journey brings the same question: what am I bringing back to Malawi? An award in New York, a fellowship in South Africa, or recognition in France only becomes meaningful to me if the knowledge, relationships, and opportunities created through it eventually improve somebody’s life at home.

His ambition is not simply to develop a better sanitary pad.

For an ordinary woman or girl in Malawi, he wants the result to be practical: a girl who can attend school during her period without choosing between dignity and affordability, menstrual products that are affordable, environmentally responsible and eventually made closer to the communities that need them, and young Malawians, especially girls, who see biotechnology and innovation as fields where they belong – not industries reserved for people somewhere else.

He said his bigger dream is to help demonstrate that Malawi can move from primarily consuming imported technologies to researching, developing, manufacturing and exporting its own solutions. “So when my work is recognised internationally, I am proud, but I also feel a greater responsibility,” he said. He wants the world to recognise Malawi not only for the challenges we face, but for the scientists, entrepreneurs, women, young people and innovators capable of solving them.

“If, years from now, a woman in a rural Malawian community uses an affordable product developed from our science without ever needing to know my name, that would mean more to me than any international award,” said Mulungu.