Ethiopian plow wins $25.000
If you want to see how farmers ploughed their fields for about 1000 years ago, go to Ethiopia. There you can still see the wooden plow, pulled by an ox.
Hardly anything has changed for changed for centuries. Until this very year.
Melesse Temesgen, an assistant professor at the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Addis Ababa University, was awarded 25,000 US Dollar for inventing a brand new device on a prehistorical tool.
With his invention food production can improve by helping drain water from waterlogged land.
The Aybar Broad-based Furrow Maker is a low-cost and easy to use farming device to plough fields and to easily drain excess water.
Higher yields
This turns soils or fields that were otherwise unavailable for farming into high yielding fields.
The reward was part of the 2014 Innovation Prize for Africa (IPA).
Also Ligou Minsob from Togo was rewarded 25,000 US Dollar. He created the Foufou Mix. A food processor to prepare the popular West African food Foufou, without using mortar and pestle to pound the food.
Regenerating bone
The main price went to the Altis Osteogenic Bone Matrix (OBM), the world’s first injectable regenerating bone graft substitute, derived from pig.
The product heals a bone fracture by stimulating a host’s own tissue regeneration system.
The two South African scientists, Nicolaas Duneas and Nuno Peres, received 100.000 US Dollar for their innovation.
Innovation Prize for Africa
The Innovation Prize for Africa (IPA) is an initiative of the African Innovation Foundation. IPA honours and encourages innovative achievements that contribute toward developing new products, increasing efficiency or saving cost in Africa. Specifically, the award targets technological breakthroughs in such main concern areas as manufacturing and service industry, health and well-being, agriculture and agribusiness, environment, energy and water and ICTs.