Food Processing - Arrival

Five days ago our group of ten Olin and Babson students and our trip leaders arrived at the airport in Accra, Ghana. We’re all here to work on ventures supported by the Affordable Design and Entrepreneurship program, a joint class between Olin and Babson in which students strive to identify and address real problems faced by limited income groups. The two teams represented in Ghana are the Child Education team, which is developing educational tools to increase student and teacher engagement; and our team, Food Processing.
 

Our team left Accra on Wednesday in a bus to Kumasi, the home of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and our most vital member, Deborah Opandoh. Debbie is the Chief Executive of QueenTech, a startup formed by this project that creates small-scale cassava graters and presses for local women. These tools are used by women to grow their small cassava-processing businesses independently from men, who are usually the owners of larger graters and presses which women must pay to use. QueenTech offers micro loans so that its personal machines are affordable to women up front; the women can then use the increased profits they gain from faster and easier cassava processing to pay off the machines in under a year. In this way, women gain control of their own businesses, begin a path of upward mobility, and devote less time and physical strain to cassava processing work.

ADE Food Processing has been working with Debbie on QueenTech for years throughout the many phases of its development. On this trip, we’re hoping to check the status of the machines that have already been put to use, speak with their users, and implement some of the product and venture changes that we’ve developed back in Boston over the past semester. This will give Debbie and the rest of our team the vital information we need to make decisions about the direction of the startup and the work we do in future semesters.

In the next few days, we’ll be reporting back on community visits, fabrication and design work, and the insights we gain from our interactions with team members who we only have the chance to meet in person a few times each year. Like our facebook page to stay tuned! If you want to help QueenTech grow and thrive, you can donate to our crowdfunding campaign!