INFoCAT: Piloting Youth-Designed Clean Energy- Powered Agritech for Smallholder Farmers in West Africa.

The INFoCAT piloting tour, is to show the creativity and problem-solving capabilities of young green innovators who have designed context-appropriate clean technologies, to enhance agricultural productivity, expand access to clean energy agritech solutions and reduce drudgery in smallholder farmers communities in Ghana, Senegal and Cote D’Ivoire.

After this piloting stage and a rigorous appraisal of these innovations, one innovator from Ghana and two innovators from Senegal and Cote D’Ivoire respectively, will receive a sum of $37,00 to scale up their innovations/businesses.

 During the programme:

• The innovators present, test-run and demonstrate how their agri-technologies function.

• Smallholder women farmers are trained on the effective operation of the technologies.

• Key stakeholders (Ministry of food and Agriculture, District Assembly members, renewable and agricultural experts and smallholder farmers and agro-processors), discuss the fine-tuning, scalability, sustainability, and adoption pathways of these agritech.

Ghana:

Innovations are piloted in Namesi -Yilo Krobo District of Ghana’s Eastern Region, Aveyime in the North Tongu District of Volta Region, Gomoa East District in the Central Region.

Innovations include: 

-Integrated Cassava Processing Unit: A cassava peeling and washing machine, a cassava grater, an energy efficient multi-fuel gari(cassava flakes)roaster and a biogas system. This biogas system produces and stores biogas-to power a biogas generator that supplies electricity for use in facility (where this unit is kept). 

- A Solar-battery-powered grains dryer 

- A Rice winnower (solar powered)

- A Smart solar powered irrigation system

-A Groundnut plucking machine 

-A Mini Combine harvester to harvest and de-husk maize.

Senegal:

In July, some clean agritech were also piloted in Senegal: Bambèye (Diourbel region), Toubacouta (Fatick region), Taïba Niassène (Kaolack region) and Gapakh (Kaolack region).  

These innovations include:

-A Groundnut pod plucker and dehuller,

 -A mobile solar powered cool house for preservation of harvested food crops

-A cashew nut crusher 

• A smart solar-powered irrigation system 

• A dynamo- energy generator .

The INFoCAT innovators in Cote D’Ivoire, will be subsequently piloting their clean agritech innovations in the coming months.

Background-INFoCAT

UNU-INRA’s INFOCAT (Innovate for Clean Agricultural Technologies) is an initiative funded by International Development Research Center (IDRC) under the Clean Energy for Development: A Call for Action initiative (CEDCA). INFoCAT is being implemented in Ghana, Senegal, and Cote D’Ivoire. Project Partners are Enda Energie (Senegal) and UNU-INRA operating Unit (Cote D’Ivoire).

Prior to this piloting stage, Innovators (10 in Ghana, 5 in Senegal and 5 in Cote D’Ivoire),  were shortlisted as part of the INFoCAT Innovation Challenge. They each won an initial grant of $7,400 and were taken through a series of meetings with smallholders and industry experts, to fine-tune their initial agritech innovations to make them more efficient for farmers and agro-processors.  A key element of these innovations is the renewable energy component. Industry experts: agricultural and renewable energy experts, have coached these young innovators throughout the process of fine tuning these machinery, to make them more environmentally friendly.