A dynamic team of postgraduate students from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) has emerged as one of the top winners in the prestigious World Food Programme (WFP) Post-Harvest Loss Innovation Challenge, securing a $10,000 grant to scale their eco-friendly grain drying solution.
The team, operating under the brand SmartFarm Technologies, is made up of Miss Emmanuella Odoom, an MPhil student in Food and Postharvest Engineering; Mr. Paa Kwasi Saka Dankyi, pursuing an MPhil in Renewable Energy Technology,and Mr. Funchious Paul Mensah,an alumni of the Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, under the supervision of Prof Joseph Oppong Akowuah.
Their winning innovation, a hybrid green dryer powered by solar and biomass energy, was originally developed as their undergraduate final year project. The dryer is designed to tackle one of Ghana’s most persistent agricultural challenges, post-harvest losses, by providing smallholder farmers with an affordable and sustainable alternative to open-sun drying.
