Siyabulela Xuza is a name worth knowing as he is a South African rocket-scientist, energy engineer and entrepreneur, as he is the Founder and CEO of Galactic Holdings; an investment holding company focused on creating global opportunities through smart energy by developing and investing in innovative solutions to address the energy needs of emerging markets.

 

Age 5, Siya witnessed an airplane flying over his hometown of Northcrest, Mthata in the Eastern Cape, dropping pamphlets during the country’s first democratic elections, making him want to develop his own airplanes. The young man developed a record-breaking rocket while creating a safer, more energy-efficient rocket fuel, by using his mother’s kitchen as a personal laboratory. Siya's rocket won a gold at the National Science Expo and the Dr Derek Gray Memorial award for the most prestigious project in South Africa. This led to Siya receiving an invitation to the International Youth Science Fair in Sweden where he attended the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm in 2006. In his honour Siya received first place at the 2007 Intel Science and Engineering Fair.

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Siya was awarded a 2010 Fellowship to the African Leadership Network, the premier, invitation only community of the most dynamic and influential leaders in Africa, successful leaders and entrepreneurs in Africa who are poised to shape Africa’s future over the next decade, and he had become the youngest member of the African Union-affiliated Africa 2.0 energy advisory panel.

Regarded as one of South Africa’s top scientists, he studied at Harvard University in the US, where he conducted research at the Harvard Center for Nanoscale Systems and the MIT Microsystems Technology Laboratories on microfuel cells distributed energy that could be used to power remote and rural areas, and holds a BSc in Engineering Sciences, from the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University. 

 

In 2011, he served as the youngest member of the African Union affiliated Africa 2.0 Energy Advisory Panel and was recognised by the World Economic Forum as a Global Shaper. Also attending the launch of the space shuttle Endeavour as a guest of NASA in 2011, Siya met the US First Lady Michelle Obama. The Nobel Foundation and the NASA affiliated Lincoln Laboratory had named a minor planet 23182 now known as Siyaxuza, in honour of his work he had achieved.  

Siya's ground breaking work on microfuel cells was published in the Journal of Electroceramics in 2013.

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Siya was awarded the Order of Mapungubwe in 2017, which is the highest honour bestowed upon a South African citizen, for his excellent contribution to scientific innovation at an early stage.