Design and Investment Financing of Vegetable drying System using Solar Energy

High post-harvest losses at small holder farmers level are often due to price volatility of fresh produce, limited access to market and volatile demands. These conditions have led to significant economic losses to farmers, limited food accessibility and increased negative environmental impacts as mentioned above. The existing approach to drying vegetables (open air drying on roads) often impact negatively on produce quality and food safety, hence it is commanding very limited value at the marketplace. Thus, a solar drying system that can be used for a wide range of vegetable produced locally, modular enough to be adopted by small holder farmers at a scale similar to the grain milling machines used by majority of the rural population in the country for food processing and economical viable to technology users and fabricators would be a major leverage point in transforming the Namibianfood system. The key activities involved in this project include:

Modify to align the existing prototype with local needs (degree of modularity, technical applicability, product quality and economic viability)
Identify the farmers that can benefits from this technology as addition to their fresh produce farming
Development of strategy for large scale implementation and financing
The main outcomes of this project would include:
Adapted solar-drying technology, tested through a small-scale pilot demonstrating the potential for:
Increased income to farmers and local fabricators.
Reduce post-harvest losses from poor prices and low demand.
Increase circularity at the level of farmers.
Cut aggregators monopoly and exploitation of farmers