Food Processing - Preparation

Meeting Debbie was one of our first priorities upon arriving in Kumasi. We came down to the guest house lobby on Thursday morning to find her smiling and looking impeccably ”smart,” as Ghanaians would say, in stark contrast to ourselves, who hadn't quite adjusted to the heat and early mornings of Ghana. Debbie showed us around Kumasi’s Central Market, a place where you can buy anything and people move like liquid in quick, thin currents. We weaved among canyon-like aisles of fabric and food vendors calling out to everyone passing by. That evening, we shared a delicious Ghanaian meal (if you haven't had Ghanaian food, seek some out!) in preparation for the first dayof work.

Suame Magazine is a treasure trove of mechanical artifacts salvaged from every machine imaginable. It seems like we’ve set up right in the middle of it all, but in fact we’re on the edge; Suame is the one of the largest manufacturing districts in west Africa, if not the largest. We spent Friday working in ITTU, a KNUST machine shop where Debbie and the Ghana team fabricate QueenTech’s products. Over the weekend we would be going on a number of community visits which would require us to have a variety of spare parts and tools for field repairs. We also needed to build a brand new cassava grater and press to sell to a first-time customer on the trip. Although Debbie and the Ghana team had already completed the structural components of the grater and press, we had a full day of mounting hardware and quality-checking the machines to get them ready for our customers, the women that are at the heart of this venture. 

Debbie, Chief Executive of QueenTech

Each sale of a machine is exciting progress for QueenTech because it immediately allows for greater independence and convenience in a woman’s often grueling cassava-processing routine. They go through this strenuous process to produce a product called “gari,” highly valued for its 6-month shelf-stability, which helps to provide reliable food and income to many people who have neither. First, they peel the woody bark off of the root and cut it into pieces, which they do quickly and effectively with only a large knife. They then grate the root, which involves bending over a sharp grating sheet for hours. Next, the ground root is left in a press to ferment and is finally dried into the final value-added product. Pressing typically requires either carrying the cassava to and from a presser, who charges for the service, or enlisting male friends or relatives to lift large, heavy rocks onto the bag of cassava. 

Claire, a new team member

 QueenTech’s products address the most burdensome parts of the process, so they have a drastic impact on women’s profits and the level of control they have over their businesses. These impacts have been recognized by platforms like Womentum, a nonprofit that funds women entrepreneurs, which funded our newest customer’s machines.

Honoring the commitment of Womentum’s generous donors (and us to our users) required our team to figure out how to weld even after the power went out during our workday on Friday--we loaded the machines into the trotro, carried them to the balcony of our guest house, and completed their assembly using the only working outlet we could find. Our customer’s grater may have processed its first cassava in a guest house bathtub, but we’re confident that it will be running in the field for years to come!

Ghana Child Education Team- Ghana STEM Network and Teacher Interview #3

CHILD EDUCATION TEAM - GHANA

Our team consists of Emma, Apurva, Viktor, Stan, and Mikayla.

DAY EIGHT |  THUR JAN 17th 2019  |  ACCRA, GHANA

In the morning we attended a meeting of the Ghana STEM Network alongside Connie, our trip leader and founder of the Exploratory, and the Exploratory’s program manager, Favour. The meeting was hosted by the Ghana Education Services to bring the Ghana STEM Network together to share their work. At the meeting, all attendees presented about their work, which was a great opportunity for us to learn about STEM education here and get into contact with those leading the efforts to make STEM education more practical and hands-on. We were also able to demo the different versions of the Brightbox, answer [questions, and receive feedback from other attendees. Everyone seemed really excited about the potential of the Brightbox in Ghana and many of those in attendance were also educators. It was very encouraging for us to see their enthusiasm for the Brightbox since they had so much knowledge and experience working in Ghana.

We were also able to meet Charles Ofuri, who created The Science Set (a low-cost, portable science lab) who had a lot of expertise with materials and manufacturing in Ghana. He helped us identify a material called strawboard as a sturdier alternative to corrugated cardboard that is easy to get in Ghana. He also helped us identify that we wanted to investigate printing presses and die-cutting here.

Students from our team discussing the Brightbox with 

members of the Ghana STEM Network

We also did another round of testing with teachers in the afternoon, this time focusing on a comparison between the MDF, cardboard, and paper boxes. We received a lot of very helpful feedback from our teachers and a lot of information about how our boxes can be used to better integrate their science and BDT (Building, Design, and Technology) classes.

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!

Ghana Child Education Team- Student Interviews #3

CHILD EDUCATION TEAM - GHANA

Our team consists of Emma, Apurva, Viktor, Stan, and Mikayla.

Ghana Child Education Team- Teacher Experiment/ Interview #2

CHILD EDUCATION TEAM - GHANA

Our team consists of Emma, Apurva, Viktor, Stan, and Mikayla.

Ghana Child Education Team- Teacher Experiment / Interview #1

CHILD EDUCATION TEAM - GHANA

Our team consists of Emma, Apurva, Viktor, Stan, and Mikayla.

Ghana Child Education Team- Arrival and Experiment Prep

CHILD EDUCATION TEAM - GHANA

Our team consists of Emma, Apurva, Viktor, Stan, and Mikayla.