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As part of Lumkani’s mission to mitigate the loss of life and property caused by fires in South Africa and across the globe, we implement large scale roll-outs of our fire detection system into urban informal settlements and townships.

Before Lumkani introduced Fire Cover in 2016, there was little hope for households and businesses that had been excluded from insurance cover, to quickly rebuild, refurnish and return to a state of dignity.

Lumkani is a small fire alarm that registers the rate at which heat rises within a small residence indicating when there might be a fire risk. It then connects with neighboring devices, setting off a chain of alarms so that neighbors can intervene. Newer versions also communicate with home owners via SMS, as well as with local emergency services.

Lumkani is commercialising an early-warning system to reduce the damage and destruction caused by the spread of shack fires in urban informal settlements. Many cooking, lighting and heating methods used by people living in informal settlements produce smoke.

The device detects fires by sensing for a rate of rise of temperature, rather than smoke, which would cause many false alarms. In the event of a fire, the detectors communicate to one another by means of radio frequency (RF) to create a community wide alert – the alert is transmitted to neighbouring detectors within a 60m radius of the fire, giving the community at large the necessary advanced warning to deal with the fire before it becomes unmanageable.

The device is a heat detector and not an ill-suited smoke detector. In a fire situation, the device will ring alerting the family inside enabling them to be proactive before the fire becomes unmanageable. After 20 seconds the device transmits a signal to all devices in neighbouring homes up to 60 metres away creating a community-wide response to the fire

During the interview, Ehlers provided some personal insights regarding difficulties facing today’s entrepreneurs. “For me the hardest part was realising a company has been built that a lot of people work for and depend on, and if serious mistakes are made, you and your whole team could be without any kind of job security, without any kind of safety net – and the whole show just ends tomorrow.” Even in light of SnapScan’s success, Ehlers still warns of the idolisation of ideas. “What comes to mind first is to really not over-value your idea. Ideas are important, absolutely, they inspire us, they drive us to experience something. But ideas aren’t always special, you have a lot of them every day. “The really hard part is turning that idea into a reality. Ideas aren’t absolute, they require analysis and change to eventually find something that really works.”