Kigoma. When Innocent Maziku woke up one morning in Standard Six and realized he could no longer hear, the world around him fell abruptly silent. His parents rushed him to various hospitals, including KCMC in Kilimanjaro northern Tanzania, where doctors confirmed his eardrums were perfectly healthy. The cause, they suggested, might lie in the nerve pathways or a deficiency in vitamin B12. Even so, no treatment restored his hearing.
What could have ended his ambitions instead became the foundation of a remarkable journey, one that has now positioned Maziku, an electrical instructor at the Vocational Education and Training Authority (VETA) in Kigoma, at the forefront of local innovation for people with hearing loss.
Maziku has designed an assistive hearing device intended to help people with partial hearing impairment, especially those unable to afford the costly devices sold in hospitals. The idea began from a deeply personal place. He needed the device himself, but he quickly realized that thousands of Tanzanians faced the same struggle, many of them silently, simply because the available devices were far beyond their reach.
His early attempt to build a functional prototype was riddled with challenges. The first circuit amplified sound so aggressively that it produced painful feedback. But drawing on his engineering background, Maziku continued refining the design, adding filters and capacitors to soften loud frequencies while enhancing softer ones. Over time, he developed a device capable of supporting communication even in loud environments such as factories.
His determination to overcome his impairment stretches back to his school years. Despite his hearing difficulties, he excelled academically, particularly in mathematics and science, thanks to the support of teachers and classmates.
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A moment of profound inspiration came when he watched a blind journalist on TBC confidently interviewing a bishop using Braille notes. If someone without sight could pursue their profession with such confidence, he thought, then he too could rise above his limitations. That moment cemented his belief that his journey did not have to stop because of a disability.
Maziku’s educational path took him from Arusha Primary School to Arusha Day Secondary School, then Tosamaganga for A-level studies, and later St. Joseph University, where he completed a Bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering in 2013.
He worked at Don Bosco as an electrical technician and mathematics teacher before joining VETA Kigoma in 2018, where his experience and mentorship from fellow instructor Edward Elias nurtured his interest in innovation.
The hearing device he has developed uses basic electronic components, including microphones, capacitors, resistors, transistors and a power amplifier. LED indicators show when the device is powered on, and it operates using rechargeable phone batteries. When Maziku presented the prototype at the Sabasaba exhibitions and during the 2023 Education Week in Tanga, stakeholders in the assistive-device sector tested it and acknowledged its promise.
Even with encouraging feedback, the path to mass production remains steep. Government certification from bodies such as Tanzania Medicine and Medical Devices Authority and Tanzania Bureau of Standards (TBS) is necessary to ensure the device is safe and reliable. Without that approval, scaling up production is impossible.
Maziku also needs capital and additional skilled hands, as assembling a single device currently takes between three and five days. He further emphasizes the need for intellectual property protection to prevent unsafe imitations that could harm users and undermine his work. Progress toward certification has been slow, largely due to the lack of necessary testing equipment in regional hospitals such as Maweni Referral Hospital.
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Beyond regulatory challenges, Maziku is working to improve the device’s physical design. The prototype is currently about the size of a bar of soap, but he hopes to reduce it to the size of a matchbox. Achieving this requires specialized equipment for molding plastic casings, which he does not yet have access to. He also plans to develop stronger versions of the device for people with severe or total hearing loss, recognizing that different levels of impairment call for different levels of amplification.
Despite these hurdles, Maziku remains hopeful. He is urging the government to support testing and refinement of the device so that it can be produced more widely and at prices Tanzanians can afford. Imported hearing aids are often prohibitively expensive, with digital models costing up to TSh 3 million and analog ones ranging from TSh 700,000 to TSh 1 million.
“If the government supports us in testing and improving this device, it can reach the communities that need it most,” he says.
Maziku has made a promise: once the device receives formal approval, and under government guidance, he will provide it free of charge to students and people living in vulnerable conditions.
His story, rooted in a personal struggle that once threatened his future, has become a beacon of possibility, a testament to how perseverance and ingenuity can transform individual hardship into a solution for many.
Adela Madyane is a journalist based in Kigoma. She can be reached at vek3cutes@gmail.com.
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