'Digital Drum' makes TIME inventions list

As its carbon offset project for the future, Avis Rent a Car has chosen an innovative South African cooking and heating method, Basa njengo Magogo, which is cheaper and carbon-friendlier than methods traditionally used in the country's townships.

Using by-products of mining and manufacturing, a group of South African companies has devised a more cost- and time-efficient way of easing the country's affordable housing backlog.

In a world first, researchers at South Africa's Council for Scientific and Industrial Research have developed a structural fingerprint classifier that is able to correctly classify a fingerprint using only partial information.