Projects
CTI has current projects all over the world that utilize simple, low-tech devices to create sustainable development. For more information about a particular project, please contact us at cti@compatibletechnology.org.
Improving Groundnut Production and Child Nutrition in Malawi and Tanzania
Malnutrition is a serious and widespread problem among children in Malawi and Tanzania – but it doesn’t have to be. Peanuts are an excellent source of protein and they thrive in Southeast Africa—where they’re known as “groundnuts”.
In 2009, CTI and our partners (Tanzania’s Sokoine University of Agriculture and ICRISAT) were awarded a grant from the McKnight Foundation to help farming villages in Malawi and Tanzania improve groundnut production and child nutrition.
Our partners at Sokoine University are focusing on improving nutrition among young children by developing nutritious groundnut-based weaning foods that can be made and distributed by mothers in the village.
CTI and its in-country partners are collaborating with groundnut growers in Malawi and Tanzania to develop affordable and efficient tools for harvesting, stripping, and shelling groundnuts—operations which are usually performed tediously by hand and largely by women. During the final phase of the program, we will transfer the groundnut technologies that have been developed to fabricators in Africa. Improved equipment for processing groundnuts will mean larger yields for farmers, higher-valued nuts, and more time for women to devote to nurturing their families and pursuing entrepreneurial, revenue-generating activities.
Institutional Support
McKnight Foundation
Increasing the harvest with Grain Processing Tools
Farmers living in developing countries struggle to produce enough food to feed their families. Because they must rely on extremely inefficient processing “tools” to bring their harvest from the field to the table, families can lose as much as 50% of their crops after harvest—a staggering and preventable waste of food.
CTI is developing a set of manually-operated devices for processing grain. The prototype equipment is being tested with help from National Cooperative Business Association (NCBA), who are working in rural Senegal to improve villagers’ pearl millet production. The field tests indicate that the equipment can significantly increase the amount of grain farmers retain in a fraction of the processing time—helping overcome major barriers to economic development for rural women and girls. The three-piece set of equipment, which includes a grain stripper, thresher and winnower, easily processes harvested pearl millet and sorghum and is currently being tested with additional grains.
When the prototype equipment is sufficiently field-tested and approved by farmers in Africa, the devices will be fabricated and distributed from West Africa.
Fact Sheet
Video on Grain Processing Tools
Institutional Support
John P. and Eleanor R. Yackel Foundation
Saint Andrew’s Lutheran Church, Stillwater, MN
Saving the Maize Harvest in Tanzania
Some farmers in Tanzania are facing a new challenge. They are using improved seed varieties and farming practices to increase their maize yields, but with few options for storing their harvest, their new surplus of maize is threatened by molds, insects and rodents, which can cause significant losses. CTI is working with partners at the Institute of Agriculture at Tumaini University and their Companion Village Project to research and test three different storage options in the Iringa region of Tanzania. In response to requests from the farmers, CTI will also explore improved drying and shelling of maize. Through working collaboratively with farmers, the goal of the project is to reduce losses so as to increase food security and present opportunities for income generation (higher market prices) by safely storing maize in silos that are practical and appropriate.
Fact Sheet
Liberating women in Ethiopia with the "Pepper Eater"
An estimated 400,000 women in Ethiopia process peppers by hand; a laborious procedure that turns fresh peppers into higher-value products of dried flakes, seeds, and powder. The tiring work leaves their hands covered in hot pepper oil and their eyes, noses, and throats burning from pepper dust in the air.
With better safety and more efficient tools, women who process pepper for a living can earn more income to support their families.
The Pepper Eater (featured in National Geographic) is a device in development that mills dried peppers with a hand-crank much faster than the traditional method of flaking peppers by hand or with a mortar and pestle. The Pepper Eater concept was developed by students at Stanford University, and it was transferred to CTI for our volunteer and staff engineers to redesign. CTI has redesigned a prototype that we believe will meet the criteria of pepper producers in Ethiopia. We have scheduled a field trial in Ethiopia to meet with pepper processing communities and co-ops for their evaluation of this new device.
Fact Sheet
www.peppereater.org
Institutional Support
Stanford University
Empowering Communities with Clean Water in Nicaragua
According to the World Health Organization, no interventions have a greater impact upon public health than the provision of safe drinking water and proper sanitation. The treatment of drinking water through chlorination, first introduced in the early 20th century, was a major advance in human health. However, in rural Nicaragua, only one-third of communities have safe drinking water. The vast majority of communities drink untreated water derived from rivers and streams polluted with disease-causing pathogens, leading to water-borne illnesses and death.
In 1998, the Nicaraguan Water Ministry asked CTI to develop a chlorination system for treating drinking water in rural communities. Today, more than 67,000 Nicaraguans have gained access to clean water through our CTI-8 Chlorinator—an inexpensive system that can be built by trained villagers and maintained for just pennies per day. Local water committees help villages pool their resources to purchase chlorine tablets—empowering the communities and ensuring the program’s sustainability. Through a partnerships with nonprofit EOS International, we are expanding the program into additional regions of Nicaragua and expect to help over 200,000 people gain access to clean water by 2013.
Institutional Support
Pentair Foundation
Project Redwood
Unity Avenue Foundation
Rotary Club of St. Paul
Improving Food Security with Breadfruit processing Enterprises
For over a decade, CTI has been involved in developing an economical, reliable method to extend the shelf-life of breadfruit through commercial processing. Breadfruit is a high-carbohydrate fruit that is abundant in many tropical nations struggling with hunger and malnutrition, but because it begins rotting immediately after harvest, breadfruit is often overlooked as a food source. However, with the right tools, breadfruit can be preserved for years once shredded, dried and ground into gluten-free flour. For many island nations, including Haiti, locally produced breadfruit flour could replace imported cereals and increase food security.
CTI engineers, in collaboration with engineering students from the University of Saint Thomas, have designed a manual processing system—a shredder, dryer, and grinder—that can be used in impoverished communities to make breadfruit flour. The breadfruit processing system will go through rigorous tests at the Breadfruit Institute to demonstrate the equipment’s functionality and economic viability. When a sustainable economic model is developed, the system will be deployed to impoverished communities in the Caribbean and elsewhere.
Institutional Support
National Tropical Botanical Garden
Turning Ag-Waste into Fuel Stick Enterprise in Bangladesh
Millions of people in developing countries cook their meals each day on an open fire. Traditional cooking fuels such as firewood and dung patties are harmful to both humans and the environment. In Bangladesh, the search for firewood contributes to deforestation and severe land erosion. Children are often responsible for making dung patties for burning, which exposes the young kids to harmful bacteria and keeps them out of school.
In a facility built in Bangladesh with support from CTI, rice hulls (an inedible by-product of rice production) are converted into low-cost fuel sticks. Bangladeshi workers heat and compress the plentiful agricultural-waste into four-foot long fuel sticks. CTI and our partners at Bengal Creative Media are helping Bangladeshi women sell the fuel sticks in small retail shops at a price comparable to firewood. After one year, the program reached complete sustainability, and now requires no additional funding support. With help from students at Michigan Technological University, CTI is making engineering improvements to the fuel stick technology, which will allow for the expansion of the enterprise model into additional countries.