Product/Service Development

Many rural households often get excess food at harvesting time but thereafter face deficits and undernutrition due to poor storage and bad planning for surplus. We will develop an innovative food banking scheme to reduce wastage and malnutrition.

Cowpea (AKA black-eyed pea) is a high-protein superfood, well-suited to growing in even the dry, poor soil conditions of sub-Saharan Africa. It isn't widely consumed in the region, however, due to the flatulence it causes - a problem that could be reduced by sugar-reducing enzymes, or by soaking and other techniques. With partners at the University of Guelph, cowpea-based hummus, flour and other products will be tested, with product promotion through social groups, retail outlets and other avenues. For more information visit: http://giiafrica.org/

We aim to develop a pesticide against maize weevils and aflatoxin-producing fungi. It will be implemented in Tanzania. If successful, it will improve food safety and production.

More than 842 million people, mostly in the developing world, do not have enough food. Poor nutrition causes 45% of deaths in children under five. This innovation is introducing a passive (natural) aeration system to improve water quality and production in aquaculture ponds. The idea uses the notion that a pond has two layers. The top layer is oxygen rich, as plants in the water generate oxygen in daylight. The bottom layer is cold and oxygen depleted.

Between 2006-2009 in Nairobi, only 17% of the total maize sampled and 5% of feed was fit for human and animal consumption respectively. University of Western Ontario researchers have developed novel yogurts containing a bacteria that, in the stomach, sequesters certain toxins and heavy metals and degrades some pesticides. We have developed novel yogurts containing lactobacilli bacteria to sequester aflatoxins and heavy metals and degrade some pesticides. When these bacteria are added to locally produced foods, they can reduce morbidity associated with these toxins.

Wireless-based biosensor network to detect mycotoxins in maize harvesting, storage and transportation

In Sub-Saharan Africa, roughly 12 of every 100 children die before age five.  Exclusive breastfeeding for six months is an effective way to save many of those lives but only about one-third of babies in the region are exclusively breastfed and in Kenya's Kibera slums, where poverty forces mothers to resume work soon after delivery, the rate is 2%.  The Linda Kizazi project will foster a Baby-Friendly Community in Kibera, creating both a personal saving plan for mothers and links to breastfeeding-friendly ways to generate income in those crucial first six months of their baby's lif

Preschool children of single mothers in urban slums are desperately vulnerable. With no formal daycares or even policy in Kenya, mothers have few options: leave their children with neighbours, with unregulated and often neglectful informal daycare providers, or lock them up alone at home. A network of safe slum daycares (Tiny Toto daycares) can help the most vulnerable and function as a conduit of health service delivery at scale. The goal is to improve the lives of preschool children living in Nairobi's slums while avoiding institutional dependency.

Lawino Kagumba of ZanaAfrica in Kenya will develop and test sanitary pads that use a locally available agricultural by-product as an alternative low-cost absorbent material. This would enable low-income women and girls to have access to affordable feminine hygiene products, improving their productivity and menstrual health.

Existing malaria vector control methods (e.g. nets and insecticide sprays) primarily target mosquitoes that enter or attempt to enter human dwellings, yet mosquitoes also obtain significant proportions of essential resources outdoors. Fredros Okumu of Ifakara Health Institute in Tanzania and his co-investigators therefore proposed the use of strategically-located outdoor vector control devices. In this project's Phase I research, the team created new and easy-to-use outdoor methods for luring, trapping and killing mosquitoes, including major African malaria vectors.