July 16, 2018
While agriculture is a major driving force of the Ghanaian economy, contributing nearly 25% to Ghana’s GDP and employing a staggering 53% of the nation’s working population, most farmers struggle to make ends meet.
Wrought with numerous challenges including low production, low level of technology, a high cost of labor, and post-harvest losses the industry’s prospects are dim.
“With the world’s poorest one billion being farmers, the onus lies on us, as diligent, committed global citizens to ensure that hardworking farmers are not poorly resourced, but are uplifted, and earn a good living from providing food for us to eat,” said Audrey S-Darko ’19, a member of Sabon Sake, a student-group out of Ashesi, that focuses on using design thinking to solve real-world problems. “We’ve been working on a simple yet effective solution that not only improves food security but also reduces post-harvest loss across Ghana and the continent. Most importantly, it enables us to heavily lean in towards the more beneficial circular economy rather than the linear economy the industry currently operates in.”
For Audrey S-Darko and the rest of team Sabon-Sake, incorporating agriculture into a circular economy, one where resources are maximized for as long as possible, through recovering and regenerating products and materials at the end of its life-cycle, is a strong step towards improving the industry.
Working through Ashesi’s D-Lab, their proposition caught the attention of judges at the WEGE prize, an annual global competition that encourages college students the world over to try to redesign the way economies work. For placing second in the 2018 edition of the competition held in Michigan, USA, the team won a $10,000 cash prize to help drive their initiative.
“The judges were deeply impressed with the enthusiasm, honesty, and passion with which Sabon Sake approaches its project,” said judge Michael Werner, Environmental Program Manager and lead for safer chemistry at Google. “It was great to see their idea evolve in response to our feedback, resulting in a solution that thoughtfully and effectively addresses a very unsustainable practice in the burning of bagasse. They had a strong prototype, a clear implementation plan, and most importantly, clear thoughts on how to scale their process up. They took a local issue and created a solution that can grow beyond that.”
“The fact that it was an international platform got us really excited,” said S-Darko, who represented the team at the competition. “It meant sharing our solution to the world and being in touch with wider and varied perspectives. It was great that we also put Africa on the map and get to participate on a platform that enhanced our knowledge of how we can further move economies from a linear to a circular model.”
For their pilot project, the team chose to work in the sugarcane industry. Using web-based technology, and biotechnology, the team’s solution involves transforming bagasse, the main by-product of sugarcane farming, into bio-compost fertilizer, increasing accessibility to the larger sugarcane market for rural farmers in Ghana’s Volta Region and helping them achieve greater yields, reduce crop losses and ultimately, overcome poverty.
“The hard news on the collapse, resuscitation, and collapse of the sugarcane processing factory in Ghana was impossible to ignore,” explained S-Darko. “We realized how important it was for the government of Ghana to create a sustainable viable model around a valuable crop such as sugarcane. As we realized its impact on Ghana’s economy, the farmers themselves, the climate and environment especially, we figured out it was a great starting point for our solution.”
Currently, the team has designed a composting system that uses liquid bio-inoculants and vermicomposting to extract maximum value from the bagasse while negating the harmful environmental impacts of burning it, the method by which it is currently disposed of.
“Presently, we are partnering with various parties to complete our first bag of organic fertilizer for a group of farmers by end of the year, and get our platform for farmers fully functional,” she explained. “For us, the focus is not just to transform agricultural residue into something of value thereby creating a circular economy in the agricultural sector of Ghana, but to transform the minds of farmers into adopting our climate-smart agriculture model and essentially improving their livelihood.”
The team plans to spend the next year building on their existing prototype by continuing to work with sugarcane farmers in Ghana to begin implementing their system throughout the Volta Region and from there, will pursue translating the system to other crops as well.
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