At just 23 years old, Amohetsoe Shale is already combining clinical prosthetics, biomedical engineering and entrepreneurship to tackle one of the biggest challenges facing amputees across Africa: access to affordable, appropriate prosthetic technology.
Shale is a registered prosthetist, a biomedical engineering master’s student at Stellenbosch University and the founder of NAVU Mobility, a South African company developing lower-limb prosthetic technology with a particular focus on making prosthetic knees more accessible.
Her motivation came from seeing first-hand how limited access to appropriate prosthetic technology can restrict independence, employment, education and participation for people with limb loss.
Rather than accepting those limitations as inevitable, she began asking why the existing system could not work differently.
That question has now developed into a young prosthetic technology company with ambitions extending far beyond South Africa.
From an Eastern Cape farm to prosthetic innovation
Shale grew up on a farm in South Africa’s Eastern Cape, in an environment where she says curiosity was encouraged.
As a child, she was taught to ask questions and imagine different possibilities.
That mindset later became central to her approach to prosthetics.
While training and working within the profession, Shale became increasingly aware of the gap between what advanced prosthetic technology can achieve and what many patients can realistically access.
Her response was simple but important.
Rather than asking why patients could not afford existing technology, she began questioning why technology was not being designed around the realities of the patients and healthcare systems expected to use it.
That shift in perspective led to NAVU Mobility.
Developing a prosthetic knee for South African realities
NAVU Mobility is developing affordable prosthetic knee technology designed specifically around the realities of South African healthcare.
That context matters.
High-end prosthetic knees available internationally can provide excellent mobility, but price, maintenance requirements, component availability and reimbursement can make some technologies unrealistic for patients in lower-resource healthcare systems.
A prosthetic component designed for Europe or North America may therefore not automatically represent the most appropriate solution for Africa.
For a product to succeed in South Africa and similar markets, it may need to balance several requirements at once:
- Affordability
- Durability
- Stability
- Ease of maintenance
- Local serviceability
- Appropriate functional performance
- Compatibility with existing prosthetic systems
For CPOs, these factors can be just as important as the headline technology itself.
A knee that performs well in a laboratory but is impossible to repair locally can quickly become unusable.
Affordability is a clinical issue
The cost of a prosthetic knee is not simply a commercial consideration.
It directly influences clinical choice.
When patients or healthcare systems cannot afford the most appropriate technology, clinicians may be forced to prescribe according to budget rather than functional need.
This is especially important for transfemoral amputees.
The prosthetic knee has a major influence on stability, cadence, mobility and confidence. Component choice can affect whether a user is able to navigate uneven ground, return to work or participate more fully in community life.
For a younger and more active amputee, the difference between a basic knee and a more functional system can be considerable.
NAVU’s objective is therefore not simply to manufacture a cheaper component.
The bigger challenge is to develop a knee that is affordable without making affordability synonymous with poor function.
A prosthetist designing prosthetic technology
Shale’s professional background is also notable.
Many prosthetic technologies originate primarily from engineering teams and later enter clinical evaluation.
NAVU is being led by someone already trained as a prosthetist.
That creates a different starting point.
A CPO understands that the success of a knee cannot be judged solely by mechanical specifications.
It also has to work within the complete prosthetic system and with the individual patient.
Alignment, socket design, activity level, confidence, rehabilitation and environmental conditions all influence performance.
Having clinicians involved at the earliest stages of technology development can help ensure that innovation is driven by real patient and workshop requirements rather than engineering possibilities alone.
Shale’s continued studies in biomedical engineering at Stellenbosch University place her directly at the intersection of those two worlds.
Recognition through the Hult Prize
NAVU Mobility has already begun receiving recognition within South Africa’s entrepreneurship ecosystem.
The company recently won the Hult Prize South Africa National Finals, giving the young venture greater visibility as it develops its technology and business model.
The Hult Prize is an international student entrepreneurship competition focused on businesses designed to address major social challenges.
For a prosthetic startup, recognition through such programmes can be particularly valuable.
Developing a medical device requires far more than creating an initial prototype.
Companies need funding for engineering, testing, regulatory work, manufacturing and clinical evaluation before they can begin scaling.
Entrepreneurship competitions can provide not only prize funding but access to mentors, investors and networks that may help bridge the gap between university research and commercial production.
Shale recognised as a leading student entrepreneur
Shale has also been named Top Student Womenpreneur at South Africa’s Entrepreneurship Development in Higher Education Awards.
The award adds another dimension to her story.
P&O has traditionally been a relatively small clinical profession, and comparatively few practitioners go on to establish technology companies.
A new generation of clinician-founders could help change that.
CPOs work directly with patients every day and often understand unmet clinical needs before larger manufacturers do.
That creates opportunities for prosthetists and orthotists to become not only users of technology but also inventors, founders and product developers.
Africa needs more locally developed P&O technology
NAVU also reflects a larger shift occurring across Africa.
Historically, much of the advanced prosthetic technology used across the continent has been imported.
This creates several challenges.
Prices may be linked to European or North American purchasing power.
Supply chains can be long.
Spare parts may be difficult to source.
Currency fluctuations can make products substantially more expensive.
Technical support may be located thousands of kilometres away.
Locally developed technology has the potential to address some of those problems.
Products designed and manufactured closer to the patient may eventually reduce costs, simplify servicing and create local expertise.
The same approach is increasingly visible in areas such as wheelchairs, orthotics, 3D printing and digital rehabilitation.
For Africa’s P&O profession, supporting credible local medical-device innovation could become an important part of expanding access.
From mobility to participation
Shale’s ambitions for NAVU extend beyond building a prosthetic component.
The broader goal is to help people with limb loss return to the things that matter to them — work, school, family responsibilities and everyday participation.
That distinction is important.
A prosthetic knee is not valuable because it flexes and extends.
Its value comes from what that movement allows the user to do.
For one patient, the goal may be returning to employment.
For another, it may mean travelling independently.
For a younger amputee, it may mean returning to education or participating more actively with friends and family.
The success of affordable prosthetic technology should therefore ultimately be measured in participation rather than component numbers.
A multinational ambition
Despite NAVU Mobility’s early stage, Shale is thinking well beyond the domestic South African market.
Her stated ambition is for NAVU to become a multinational company capable of helping millions of people.
That vision reflects the scale of the opportunity.
Across Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, millions of people live with lower-limb loss while access to appropriate prosthetic technology remains highly uneven.
If NAVU can develop a clinically effective knee that can be manufactured, maintained and delivered at a significantly more accessible price point, the potential market extends far beyond South Africa.
But scaling will require substantial work.
Medical-device regulation, clinical validation, manufacturing quality, distribution and professional training will all become important as the company progresses.
A new generation of African P&O innovators
Perhaps the most interesting part of Amohetsoe Shale’s story is what it represents for the profession itself.
She is not an engineer entering prosthetics from the outside.
She is a prosthetist who saw a clinical problem and decided to build a company around solving it.
That pathway could become increasingly important across IMEA.
The next generation of P&O innovation does not have to arrive exclusively from established multinational manufacturers.
It can also emerge from clinicians in Johannesburg, Nairobi, Mumbai, Amman, Karachi or Accra who understand their own healthcare systems and patient populations better than anyone else.
Shale’s question was essentially: why accept that inadequate technology and limited access are simply the way things are?
At 23, she has already turned that question into NAVU Mobility.
The bigger test now will be whether the company can translate an ambitious idea into durable, clinically effective and genuinely affordable prosthetic knees at scale.
If it succeeds, the impact could extend far beyond awards — and far beyond South Africa.
- Read Amohetsoe Shale’s story
- Stellenbosch University
- Hult Prize
- Entrepreneurship Development in Higher Education
- International Society for Prosthetics and Orthotics
- IMEA CPO