Growing up in rural Nigeria, Adaeze Akpagbula spent her school years babysitting her family’s chicks through the night, adjusting the coal heater, food and water needed to keep the poultry, and the family income, alive.
Despite her best efforts, unpredictable temperatures, humidity and air quality changes led to the deaths of thousands of chicks, a lesson that would propel her to commit her life to making African farms more climate-resilient.
“Nigeria’s unprecedented rainfalls and weather patterns are not predictable, and with heat and cold stresses our birds were dying,” the 34-year-old agricultural engineer said in a telephone interview.
Photo: AFP
“We understand that innovation is pivotal to combating climate-related issues around food insecurity,” she said.
Akpagbula last year launched a remote-sensing device called PenKeep that monitors and controls environmental conditions in poultry farms. She is extending the technology into aquaculture and greenhouse farms.
Alongside container farms in South Africa cultivating soldier flies for animal feed, solar-powered fish and crop dryers in Tanzania and machine-learning pest detectors in Kenya, Africans are coming up with innovative solutions to overcome the effects of climate change on food production.
Such solutions are going to be needed as Africa is the continent most affected by hunger, a UN report says.
Together with conflict and economic crises, climate shocks are leaving Africa at the epicenter of a hunger crisis, with one in five — about 300 million people — short of food.
It is also the continent most vulnerable to climate shocks, while contributing the least to carbon emissions.
“Current societal inequalities, such as resource constraints, make it even more difficult to source funds to adapt to these changes,” said Mulako Kabisa, an environmental scientist at the Global Change Institute research platform at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
“Homegrown solutions matter because they take into cognizance the local context ... and what will be sustainable in the long run,” she said in e-mailed comments.
PenKeep’s solar-powered device interprets data from sensors that monitor environmental changes including temperature, water levels and air quality in poultry coops. Farmers are alerted of condition changes through a text message, e-mail or an alarm.
It is being used by more than 1,200 chicken farmers in western and northern Nigeria, with more than 100,000 chickens monitored in the company’s first six months.
Subscriptions of about US$15 a month make it more affordable for farmers, Akpagbula said.
Users can also use an artificial intelligence (AI) management app called FS Manager that provides farmers with information including management advice, weather updates and bookkeeping services.
“Nigeria has millions of poultry farmers ... but they are not producing enough ... because they are spending so much on energy and they have a lot of poultry mortality as a result of their environment,” Akpagbula said.
Farmers using PenKeep have seen poultry mortality rates decrease by 72 percent, Akpagbula said.
In east Africa, Tanzanian Evodius Rutta utilizes the continent’s abundance of sun through his MAVUNOLAB Solar Dryer that helps subsistence fish processors and farmers rapidly dry out produce including fish, fruits and vegetables, preventing postharvest food loss.
Small-scale fish processors at Lake Victoria in western Tanzania have begun using his dryer, reducing the drying time of 250kg of fish from 12 hours to four.
Climate variability has led to erratic rains that can spoil up to 50 percent of fishers’ harvests as they do not have access to cold storage, said Rutta, a sustainability researcher and MAVUNOLAB innovation hub founder.
“Because of the rains and high tides, it has also become very dangerous for fishermen that go to the sea and the lakes,” Rutta said in a telephone interview.
“We need low-cost solutions for farmers to adapt to changing climate patterns because it’s going to be unavoidable,” he said, adding that he was getting requests from farmers in Zimbabwe, Uganda and Kenya to use his invention.
Climate change can affect environmental factors such as temperature and humidity that can in turn influence the life cycle and spread of crop pests, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization says.
Pests are already responsible for at least 40 percent of crop loss worldwide.
Kenyan computer scientist Esther Kimani witnessed this firsthand growing up when pests devastated up to one-third of her family’s pea, potato and corn crops in the south of Kenya.
By the time the pests were detected, the destruction was so severe that even using pesticides became pointless.
Kimani was inspired to invent the Early Crop Pest and Disease Detection Device — a solar-powered tool that uses AI and machine learning-enabled cameras to rapidly detect and alert farmers of pests and diseases.
Kimani’s invention is being used by more than 5,000 farmers across Kenya since its launch in 2020. A group-leasing model reduces the cost to each farmer to US$3 per month.
The device also advises farmers about which pesticides to use when, according to predicted climatic changes.
Kimani said that more than 1,214 hectares of land have been protected from pest infestation by her invention.
She recently won the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation, for which Akpagbula and Rutta were also short-listed.
Some homegrown innovations are also focusing on protecting agricultural output while reducing carbon emissions.
South Africa’s Philafeed helps build tailor-made black soldier fly container farms. The fly larvae feed on food waste, diverting planet-heating methane emissions from landfills.
The larvae can also be used as a protein feed for livestock, reducing the need for carbon-intensive soya and fish meal.
The larvae manure, a byproduct known as frass, helps increase soil and plant tolerance against drought and flooding, and in turn can increase crop yield in times of climate uncertainty.
“Through black soldier flies we want farmers to be able to diversify their income if there is a failed season due to climate change,” Philafeed cofounder Maya Zaken said.
Philafeed is piloting its new container model in Cape Town.
Despite initial funding challenges and struggles to get farmer buy-in, Akpagbula has faith that her innovation, alongside others on the continent, would soon become essential to farmers as climate shocks become more severe and more frequent.
“People always say why now? Why you doing this now?” Akpagbula said. “I tell them it’s because of the urgency of the climate crisis.”
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
The New Taiwan dollar and Taiwanese stocks surged on signs that trade tensions between the world’s top two economies might start easing and as US tech earnings boosted the outlook of the nation’s semiconductor exports. The NT dollar strengthened as much as 3.8 percent versus the US dollar to 30.815, the biggest intraday gain since January 2011, closing at NT$31.064. The benchmark TAIEX jumped 2.73 percent to outperform the region’s equity gauges. Outlook for global trade improved after China said it is assessing possible trade talks with the US, providing a boost for the nation’s currency and shares. As the NT dollar
PRESSURE EXPECTED: The appreciation of the NT dollar reflected expectations that Washington would press Taiwan to boost its currency against the US dollar, dealers said Taiwan’s export-oriented semiconductor and auto part manufacturers are expecting their margins to be affected by large foreign exchange losses as the New Taiwan dollar continued to appreciate sharply against the US dollar yesterday. Among major semiconductor manufacturers, ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光), the world’s largest integrated circuit (IC) packaging and testing services provider, said that whenever the NT dollar rises NT$1 against the greenback, its gross margin is cut by about 1.5 percent. The NT dollar traded as strong as NT$29.59 per US dollar before trimming gains to close NT$0.919, or 2.96 percent, higher at NT$30.145 yesterday in Taipei trading
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