After winning a sum of $7400 each in December 2024, 10 young INFoCAT Innovation Challenge winners have recently gone through a series of activities (field trips), with the INFoCAT Ghana team and experts in the agriculture and renewable energy sector. The aim of these trips is to help innovators fine-tune their innovations and manufacture these clean agritech machinery, to best suit the needs of smallholder farmers in communities involved in the INFoCAT project.
In the first phase of the field trips, (22nd- 24th January), the INFoCAT (Ghana) team visited smallholder farming communities across 3 regions in Ghana: Central, Eastern and Volta.
Each community engagement involved introduction of innovators and their innovations to the farming communities. The farming communities also pointed out the challenges they faced in their farming processes. This was to help the INFoCAT Ghana team identify with experts, how to help the innovators develop their agritech innovations, to be user friendly, efficient (reduce emissions, energy saving, quality processing), cost effective, and most especially, to help reduce drudgery in farming activities.
With inputs from smallholder farmers on their pertinent agricultural machinery needs and recommendations from experts, the second phase of the INFoCAT field trip, was a follow up with innovators on the assembling and fine-tuning phase of their innovations.
This phase of field trips took place from 13-24th April 2025. The trip started from the Ashanti region and through Bono Region. The team visited an INFoCAT grantee DAS Biogas- that uses the waste from cassava processing to generate biogas. This gas is then used to power a biogas generator that provides electricity for other cassava processing machines and lighting for homes. Wobil Technologies, another promising group of young innovators with a strong gender balanced team, received further coaching from experts on their rice winnower machine.They were advised to consider motor sizing, efficiency in design and assembling a solar energy system with the right capacity to power the machine.
Other innovators visited include: i-Solar, a group with a smart solar powered irrigation system that monitors soil water content and automatically triggers a pump to irrigate a farm in the absence of the farmer. This group received a lot of coaching and mentorship from the expert team, around energy and automation.
Harvest Ease, another agritech company in Sunyani dedicated to creating small harvesters, which harvests and dehusks maize from its stalk, was also provided with hands-on design support during the visit and advised on how to make their machinery more efficient and cost effective for farmers.
The team also visited Sunify innovators in Tamale, who are manufacturing a solar dryer that will have a heating and blower system that dries grains in about 6 hours.Traditionaly, this would usually take 5-7 sunny days.
Other agritech machines inspected in Greater Accra, Volta, Central and Eastern Regions include, a cassava peeling machine, a groundnut pod plucking/picking machine, a multi-fuel gari roaster/cookstove and an agro waste briquetting machine.
These inputs, especially from experts, and general dialogue between the INFoCAT Ghana team, experts, innovators and smallholder farmers, has proven to be of great help to these innovators. The unique approach of having these experts provide hands-on training, mentorship and consistent guidance to these young innovators, has come a long way in helping them improve the efficiency and environmental impact of their machines.This also presents a high potential for improving the productivity of smallholder farmers.
The INFoCAT journey is not over. With these expert inputs and recommendations targeted at upgrading these agritech innovations, there still remains an opportunity for one of these young agritech innovators to win the final prize of $37,000 to expand their business.
The INFoCAT (Innovate for Clean Agricultural Technologies) project, is to advance economic empowerment of both women and youth in rural areas of Ghana, Cote d’ivoire and Senegal, by promoting low-cost clean energy-powered technology solutions that increase agricultural productivity and income for smallholder rural farmers.
INFoCAT is sponsored by International Development Research Center (IDRC), Canada. Project partners include : ENDA Energie (Senegal) and Cote D’Ivoire ( UNU-INRA , operating Unit).
