It’s estimated that more than 100 million girls under the age of 18 will be married in the next decade. One country that’s trying to end the practice of child marriage is Ethiopia. There, the Berhane Hewan programme, meaning ‘Light for Eve’ in Amharic, promises families a solar-powered light if their daughter remains unmarried and in school until she’s at least 18. This approach is known as a conditional asset transfer. The solar lanterns enable girls to study after dark and they can also be used to charge mobile phones, which is particularly useful in remote areas with no electricity. Girls are taught to make money from the lanterns by charging neighbours to power up their mobile phones too. People Fixing the World visits Dibate, a small village in western Ethiopia. More than 600 girls in this part of the country have received a solar lamp. Reported by Lily Freeston Produced by Ruth Evans and Hadra Ahmed

(Photo Credit: BBC)

More than five billion people around the world don’t have access to safe, affordable surgical care. It has been a big problem in Ethiopia where most specialist doctors are concentrated in the cities, contributing to high rates of maternal mortality. In 2009 the Ethiopian government began training Integrated Emergency Surgical Officers. Health workers, such as nurses and midwives, are taught to perform emergency operations in remote, rural clinics where there are no surgeons. It was the first programme of its kind and is seen as a model for other developing countries. More than 800 surgical officers have now completed the three-year Masters programme and are performing hundreds of caesareans and other emergency procedures each year. People Fixing The World follows one of them, Seida Guadu, as she operates to try to save the lives of a mother and her unborn child. Reporter: Ruth Evans Producers: Lily Freeston and Hadra Ahmed

(Picture credit: BBC)

Many African countries face huge challenges in education. Millions of children completing primary school still struggle to read and teachers that should be in classrooms are routinely absent.

Two US entrepreneurs think they have a solution: a network of profit-driven low-cost private schools, called Bridge Academies, that can be created and staffed at lightning speed. Lessons are scripted by ‘master educators’, and teachers read them aloud, word for word, from e-readers.

Along with awards, the model has attracted a tidal wave of criticism from teaching unions, NGOs and governments too. World Hacks visits a Bridge Academy in Kenya to ask whether the controversial idea can work.

Presenter: Kat Hawkins Reporter: Sam Judah

Photo Credit: BBC

Just over a year ago, Kenya introduced the world’s most draconian rules on single-use plastic bags. People can be fined up to $40,000 or even thrown in jail for producing, selling or using them. World Hacks travels to Nairobi to find out what impact the ban has had, and asks why Kenya has taken such a seemingly progressive stance on plastic. We also speak to experts in the UK to find out why many governments prefer to ‘nudge’ their citizens into cutting back on plastic bags, instead of banning them.

Presenter: Amelia Martyn-Hemphill

Photo Credit: Getty Images

In Kibera, the largest slum in Kenya’s capital Nairobi, access to water is a minefield. The marketplace is dominated by water cartels, or mafias - water is often syphoned off from the mains supply and pumped in through dirty hosepipes.

But Kennedy Odede is trying to change that. Dubbed the ‘president of the poor’, he set up a scheme to pump water up from a borehole deep underground, and deliver it through a new network of pipes with a difference. To avoid contamination, and keep them safe from the cartels, Kennedy’s pipes are suspended 15m in the air on a series of poles that carry them around the slum.

In this episode of World Hacks we travel to Kibera to meet Kennedy, see the aerial waterways in action, and ask if his scheme can expand to help people living in slums across the globe.

Presenter: Dougal Shaw Producer: Sam Judah

(Photo: Kennedy Odede. Credit: BBC)

More than three million people in Nigeria are living with HIV, but only about 10% of the population has ever taken an HIV test. Talking about sex is a taboo subject and sexual health clinics are not popular places to be seen. Other sexually transmitted diseases, such as Hepatitis B and Syphilis, are on the rise among young people. But a Nigerian entrepreneur called Florida Uzoaru thinks she has a millennial-friendly solution to sexual health. Her start-up is giving people the option to anonymously test themselves at home. Secret packages, sent by courier, contain a pick ‘n' mix of self-test blood kits, contraception or the morning after pill. Customers buy everything online and receive counselling and assistance via WhatsApp. But can bypassing the healthcare system solve the problem? Producer and Reporter: Amelia Martyn-Hemphill

Photo Caption: SlideSafe founder Florida Uzoaru with her secret STI testing kits Photo Credit: BBC

In Southern Africa, over seven thousand women are infected with HIV each week. Many can't persuade their partners to wear a condom, so a new form of protection being tested in Malawi could be a real game-changer. It's a small silicon ring which encircles the cervix and releases antiretroviral drugs, lowering the women’s risk of contracting HIV. Their partners can’t feel it, and don’t even need to know it’s there. World Hacks meets the women pioneering this approach and taking control of their own protection.

Presenter: India Rakusen Reporter: Ruth Evans

Image: A community health nurse in Malawi holds up the dapivirine ring / Credit: BBC

Most Malawians live in rural areas and if they get sick, it can be incredibly difficult to get testing kits or medicines in time. Malawi's government has now opened up part of its sky to companies and charities who want to use drones to solve this problem, creating what’s being called the world’s first humanitarian drone testing corridor. World Hacks travels to rural Malawi to assess the opportunities and dangers from this new technology, and to see how much Malawians could benefit.

(Photo: Villagers in rural Malawi look on as a drone carrying medical supplies is unloaded)

It’s not usually a good idea to take selfies of your private parts, but what if those photos could save your life? A new, tiny medical device is being used across Africa to detect cervical cancer from a mobile phone photograph. In Gambia, doctors are often in short supply, but nurses, midwives and smartphones are widely available, allowing patients to be diagnosed and treated remotely. In sub Saharan Africa, cervical cancer is the number one cause of cancer deaths in women, but it takes years to develop and can be treated for under $30 if caught early. Can cervical selfies get women talking about a silent, unseen killer?

Presenter: India Rakusen Reporter: Amelia Martyn-Hemphill

Image: Nurse using the EVA system in Gambia / Credit: BBC

Last year Uganda took in more refugees than any other country. But how do the South Sudanese, fleeing civil war, transform the African Bush into a new home? Ruth Alexander reports

Each year around 100,000 women die due to heavy bleeding after giving birth. But help is at hand from an unexpected source: condoms. World Hacks goes to a maternity hospital in Kenya to speak to the medical staff using this super-cheap kit that is saving lives.

Also on the programme, the US start-up that is asking volunteers to donate their voices, then transforming them into personalised, digital voices for people with degenerative diseases.

Reporters: Harriet Noble and Amelia Martyn-Hemphill Presenter: India Rakusen

Image: Midwife Anne Mulinge / Credit: BBC

The availability of blood for transfusions saves lives after difficult births and operations. But in much of the developing world, hospitals have a blood shortage. One entrepreneur in Nigeria is working on a solution. She has developed an app that connects blood banks to hospitals, and has built a network of moped drivers to ferry blood around Lagos, the largest city in the country. World Hacks investigates whether her solution can save lives.

Also on the programme, the designers of a new “city tree” – large structures filled with moss that attempt to absorb pollution from the air.

Presenter: Mukul Devichand Reporters: Stephanie Hegarty and Dougal Shaw

Image: Moped driver in Lagos / Credit: BBC

Women in Niger have more children, on average, than anywhere else in the world. The government of Niger can’t support such a fast growing population and wants traditions to change

Road accidents are the single largest cause of death amongst young people around the world. But a project in Kenya is making impressive progress in tackling the issue. It has deployed a small and very simple weapon, which has been proven to cut bus accidents by at least a quarter – a sticker.

Also on the programme, how they’re making recreation space in Chile, but without knocking down any buildings.

Presenter: Tom Colls Producer: Harriet Noble

[Image: Mutatu buses in Kenya. Copyright: Getty Images]

For generations those who, for biological reasons, don't fit the usual male/female categories have faced violence and stigma in Kenya. Intersex people - as they are commonly known in Kenya - were traditionally seen as a bad omen bringing a curse upon their family and neighbours. Most were kept in hiding and many were killed at birth. But now a new generation of home-grown activists and medical experts are helping intersex people to come out into the open. They're rejecting the old idea that intersex people must be assigned a gender in infancy and stick to it and are calling on the government to instead grant them legal recognition. BBC Africa’s Health Correspondent Anne Soy meets some of the rural families struggling to find acceptance for their intersex children and witnesses the efforts health workers and activists are making to promote understanding of the condition. She also meets a successful gospel singer who recently came out as intersex and hears from those who see the campaign for inter-sex recognition as part of a wider attack on the traditional Kenyan family.

Helen Grady producing.

(Photo: Apostle Darlan Rukih, an intersex gospel singer)