UMN Students and CTI Inspire Young Entrepreneurs in Tanzania

By Kathleen Clonts, CTI Volunteer

Innovative thinking by students is putting two grinders provided by Compatible Technology International (CTI) to a vital new use in Tanzania.

Two University of Minnesota master’s students worked with students at a school run by Eden Prairie-based Peace House Africa west of Arusha, Tanzania, this summer to brainstorm business uses for two grinders donated by CTI.

The Minnesota students, Samuel Lee and Melanie Plucinski, instructed about 80 students at the Peace House Secondary School in the fundamentals of creating and running a business, from product development to market research. The students came up with an original product concept using the CTI grinders: corn flour that is fortified with moringa leaves, which provide a significant source of beta carotene, vitamin C, protein, calcium, iron and potassium. The flour will add flavor and important nutrients to porridge as well as the traditional Tanzanian corn-based staple called Ugali.

But first the students are raising money to grow moringa trees on the school campus. They hope to begin harvesting the leaves next year, grinding them and putting their business plan into action to create jobs and meet the nutritional needs of local people.


The CTI grinders were donated to Peace House Africa, which runs the school near Arusha for AIDS orphans and vulnerable children. The school’s goal is to build students’ problem-solving and entrepreneurial skills so they will help create a sustainable future for their homeland.

Rebuilding Lives in Haiti

When the devastating earthquake hit Haiti in January, Madame Aliette Belizaire was among the millions whose lives were changed forever. In the aftermath of this horrific disaster, Madame Belizaire discovered that her daughter had been killed in the quake and her that husband was missing, leaving her with two grandchildren and eight remaining children of her own to look after. As days passed and the crisis continued, Madame Belizaire and her family made the heart-wrenching decision to leave Port-Au-Prince.

After traveling to the southwest city of Jeremie, Madame Belizaire and her family were provided a small home by the Haitian Health Foundation, where they began rebuilding their lives, growing corn and other crops to support their family. In May, Compatible Technology International (CTI) sent a food grinder to the Belizaire family. Within days of receiving this simple device, the whole family was processing crops into enough food to eat as well as to sell in the local market. The family began using the grinder to make Akasan, a corn-based porridge meal, and peanut butter, which is important for relieving malnourishment in the children of the area who have kwashiorkor - a severe protein deficiency. The family will use the grinder to feed themselves and to prepare peanut butter which they will continue to sell at the market. All of the children will be able to attend school with the money generated from these sales.

Although it's been seven months since the earthquake hit Port-Au-Prince, the extreme poverty that dictates the lives of 80% of the country continues, and the truth is, without addressing Haiti's chronic hunger and malnutrition, Haitians will continue to be vulnerable to the next earthquake, flood, or famine.

CTI is partnering with organizations in Haiti to identify communities and families that can use simple, post harvest technologies to produce more nutritious food and generate incomes. CTI needs help from supporters like you who are willing to step in when relief falls short. Donate now to contribute to CTI's efforts toward sustainable development in Haiti and around the world.

CTI in Kenya

By Kathleen Graham, CTI Volunteer, Kenya

Beneath enormous African skies the rolling mountainsides of far Western Kenya are lush green with the spring rains. Farmers anxiously watch the crops they planted in February - will the rain be enough, erasing droughts of recent years; or too much, drowning the beautifully emerging fields of maize, soya beans, sorghum, and ground nuts? Too soon to tell, but hope is everywhere.

ICRISAT driver Daniel Kisavi confidently guides our four-wheel drive over deeply rutted dirt roads often reduced to one lane, from our base at Homa Bay, on the swampy shores of Lake Victoria. So far this week I have visited five of the seven farmers’ groups who sent a participant to the Ewing training session in February, 2009. CTI, with support from the Graham Service Fund (thank you to my relatives and friends), co-sponsored this event, along with ICRISAT (thank you Richard Jones), KARI (Kenya Agricultural Research Institute) and the Kenyan Ministry of Agriculture. Richard introduced me to KARI and the Ag Ministry, who recruited the participants.

At the two-day training each participant learned to disassemble, assemble, and clean the Ewing grinders. And we each took a turn processing local crops - g-nuts, sorghum, finger millet, cow peas and “green gram,” learning to adjust the burrs so the final product would be just the right texture for local taste. And each participant was tested – could s/he stand up and teach the teachers what s/he had learned?? All passed, some barely. Would they be able to convey a few key Ewing principles to their farmer members?

This week is the real test. How have the six grinders that were loaned to the participants’ groups been used? More than half way through the week, even if nothing else positive comes to light, this pilot project exactly fulfills the CTI mission. The farmers in these groups live on agricultural land 40, 50, even 70 kilometers off the tarmac. They carry water from rivers or bore holes every day for family use. They eat what they grow, and little else. Their homes lack electricity, plumbing, and other “modern conveniences.” Yet they tend neat enclosures of chickens and goats, hand hoe a few acres of crops, are well-organized; they take advantage of improved seed from ICRISAT distributed by KARI, and they have used the grinders well, to improve nutrition and to generate small amounts of income, which they share. 

Two groups, the Helima Widow’s Self-Help Group and St. Florence’s Self Help Group, share a grinder. All 42 members have been taught to use the grinder. They use it EVERY DAY!! Before the grinder was delivered in February, 2009, most sold their ground nuts whole. A few made nut paste using a mortar and pestle, spreading the mash on flat stones, to be worked with another stone. Now all members use the grinder to make paste from their nuts, and sell the paste at the local market, where they report there is very strong demand for the high quality product they produce. They also use the paste in what I can only describe as “designer ugee”, a porridge made from sorghum, grain amaranth, finger millet, and cassava, flavored with a little citrus juice and sugar. They have tried to market this nutritious porridge, but it is more expensive than the ugee commonly produced, and people do not understand the value of the new product. For the time being, they feed the new ugee to their families, and take orders from others who want it. Interestingly, it is people with a family member in hospital who have ordered the new ugee, as they feel it is the best food for the sick.

We were served a cake made from soya flour, grain amaranth and nut paste – before the grinder provided the opportunity to make these “custom flours” easily, these groups never baked a cake!! They are experimenting, using sorghum and finger millet to make “finger rolls.” The regional KARI manager who was accompanying me, Nasambu Okoko, was visibly excited by these developments. She had them repeat the ingredients of the cake and the ugee, several times, noting repeatedly herself how nutritious and how novel these products are in this area.

The grinder has been a catalyst for these two groups, “boosting” their horizon and stimulating further activity. Several farmers have increased their ground nut plantings this season, spurred by the knowledge they can add value to the nuts before they go to market, and the profit will stay in their pockets.

Perhaps by the standards of entrepreneurship in the developed world the few extra dollars each farmer in these groups earns this year is paltry, but where we sit in Nyototo township the pride and excitement they share as we munch a newly baked cake is priceless.

It is late, and we are scheduled to leave for another group in the morning, although the ongoing downpour tonight might delay us, as we wait for the sun to dry the roads from slippery mud to navigable dirt. More later.

San Salvador AgroExpo Day 4

By LeAnn Taylor, CTI Volunteer, El Salvador

It will be my 4th day at the AgroExpo today and I have made some very important contacts. There are currently 5 very interested people who want to both make and sell the grinders here, and two more who just want to manufacture them. I plan to visit at least three workshops tomorrow. One vendor had the idea of modifying the in-country burrs so they could be used on our bodies. Then the users could have our burrs for their dry goods and the local ones for making corn masa. It's a great idea because the local taste does not like the texture that our burrs make for masa and yet it's the most common food they grind here.

Another thing that has been very fun is: we have invited the skeptical inquirers to bring their product in for a test. As a result, we have had three people bring corn, hibiscis, and lemon grass. Of course, the grinder performed perfectly making both course pieces for tea and fine for products like soap. I think we'll have two sales from those. The spices smelled wonderful and the hibiscis turned everything on the grinder pink.

The Salvadorans are wonderfully warm and friendly and also very entrepreneurial. They really love the new business idea when they see it. I am feeling very optimistic about this project.

Arrival in San Salvador

Last year, CTI was contacted by CENTA (Center for Agrarian and Forest Technology), an arm of El Salvador’s Department of Agriculture, to help the organization promote the grinding of sorghum. Sorghum is a nutritious grain that grows in El Salvador in contrast with wheat, which is much more expensive, less nutritious, and has to be imported. There is a big demand for grinders in El Salvador to grind corn, wheat, and sorghum into flour, and although there are other grinders available in El Salvador, CTI’s devices are much better in quality and are even less expensive.

I traveled to El Salvador last summer to explore how CTI can help with sorghum grinding. I brought a wood grinder model, a new option that was developed by CTI so that manufacturers in El Salvador would be able to make the grinder body themselves, a lower-cost alternative. The response from locals was very enthusiastic. Many people wanted CTI’s grinders, but unfortunately, without an in-country distributor to supply and market the grinders, CTI’s equipment could only be exposed to a small number of people, and grinders would only be available by shipping them from our headquarters in Saint Paul, an expensive and slow process.

I am now returning to El Salvador to increase CTI’s visibility in the agricultural community and to look for a local distributor. I'm just getting in after a 10 hour day demonstrating CTI grinders at an AgroExpo in San Salvador, El Salvador. You can't believe how many people there are coming through that place; they say it's 100,000 per day. The Expo is is just like the Minnesota State Fair - a large campus with several buildings, animal corrals, and horses going through the crowd.

I made some good connections today and I think I've already sold the extra grinder I brought with me for demonstration. There was much interest in the wooden grinder, more than I would have expected, and I met at least 3 people who were sincerely interested in becoming vendors, maybe even manufacturers.

Vilma, my contact with CENTA, tells me that her organization will begin expanding its sorghum promotion into Honduras, Guatemala, and Nicaragua within two months and she has the support of all of CENTA, even the Agriculture Minister, so that is looking very positive as well.

On Tuesday, I hope to visit a women's cooperative that wants a grinder, so it looks like I'll get into the field after all.

Port Au Prince, Haiti - February 22, 2010

This is my first night in Port Au Prince, where the devastation for my reason coming occurred. But the longer I am here the more I realize that—earthquake or not—there’s been a desperate need for CTI and other NGOs like us all along. I have been doing most of my work over the past few days in the rural farming areas outside of the devastation where small technologies that save time and valuable crops have always been needed. Now with the influx to the regions of refugees from Port Au Prince they are all the more needed.

I have been working with an NGO that has been on the ground here in Haiti for years and thus knows the issues better than myself, Trees for the Future (www.plant-trees.org). They have connections with small communities through the rural mountain surrounding Port au Prince, that are planting trees in the hopes of restoring some of the soil that has been lost due to deforestation over the last 200 years. Along with planting trees for better soil, come needs to maintain more of the harvest to further pull themselves out of poverty.

I met with over 50 leaders of these communities over the last few days who all shared similar stories; they had walked long distances to pay someone to grind their maize, sorghum, millet or groundnuts and much of their harvest was lost in the process. If they did not have to travel, they would save food, time, and money. All of them expressed both hopes and doubts about me returning. Hope that I would bring the technologies that I said that we had, and doubt because so many NGOs have promised such things in the past.

They all expressed the same concerns about the current influx of aid into Haiti; that while immediate assistance is incredibly important to alleviate pain and suffering, there was no one coming to them to talk about ways to ensure a good harvest in three months. I think that we at CTI are in the right place and the right time. I hope that we can find partners in Haiti and other places to help us continue our work here.

A quick note, while the blog has been sporadic because of internet issues here the tweets have not. They do not offer the same in depth stories as the blog, but a constant reminder about CTI’s work. Please check them often and the CTI website for more.

Sam Usem

CTI Americas Committee Vice Chair

Limonade, Haiti - February 15, 2010

By Sam Usem, CTI Volunteer, Haiti

It has been a few days that I have been here now. My first couple of days were spent ensuring the Meds & Food For Kids (mfkhaiti.org) had all of the support of CTI that they needed. Since then I have been establishing CTI within the existing NGO community, attending UN cluster and logistics meetings, and setting up sites to visit.

I have learned one thing for certain thus far. No matter what you have planned for you day in Haiti, it will change ten times over before it even begins. I have spent the last two days with Gabrielle, the country director of Sonje Ayiti (www.sonjeayiti.com) a non-profit based in Cap-Haitian that does everything from micro-financing and farming projects to immediate food aid and coordinating medical teams. On Monday I got to know the organization better and helped to ferry around medical teams while visiting different small subsistence farms along the drive. With limited resources at the moment one jumps at any chance they can for a free ride.

Today I spent the morning with the RAVAFAL women’s group in Limonade, about 8km east of Cap-Haitian. The co-op group has been making small chocolates for hot cocoa to sell in Haiti and is trying to begin an export business. When they hear through the grapevine about our grinders, it seemed to be a perfect fit. The Ewing III grinder has never been used for cocoa beans before, but the only way to know is to try. With about 15 women from the group in attendance we covered the maintenance on the grinder and then got right to work.

The grinder worked like magic, and before I knew it, the group had ground 10 kilos of cocoa beans. In the recipe includes nutmeg and cinnamon before they put the chocolate into a mold, freeze, and then into package it. The long term plans are to build a small factory based on CTI grinders and sell the hard cocoa candies to make hot chocolate in Haiti and the U.S.

After meeting with the co-op, I traveled to a few of the farming sites that Sonje Ayiti has in the community to see if other CTI technologies could be of use. They have over 60 acres that are owned by a co-op, and while at the moment they are only growing vegetables, grain is coming in the future and thus a place for CTI devices.

After returning to Cap-Haitian I visited the Meds & Food for Kids factory and helped load 1,000 kilos of Medika Mamba into the Sonje Ayiti truck to be taken to malnourished children in Leogane, an area just outside of Port Au Prince that hit hard by the quake.

In Haiti at the moment, most people are living second-by-second approaching each issue as they come up. While it is important to address these it is all the more important that we do not forget about the next couple of months. It is good to know that the day can start by building long term solutions and end by sending aid to where it is needed most. The rain has started and so I am off to my room, before another day of begins with the sun and changes as quickly as it moves.