How 23-year-old student uses device to solve food-waste crisis

Kitgum Lawrence Okettayot is on a road trip across Uganda.
He’s spreading the word about a device he’s created which could be a solution to Africa’s food waste crisis.
Food wasted every year in the continent could feed up to 300 million people, according to the United Nations.
In just Uganda alone, up to 40% of fruit and vegetables end up being discarded.
But Lawrence, a 23-year old engineering student, hopes that his invention, the Sparky Dryer, will change everything.
The device is a dehydrator running on garden waste that dries fruit and vegetables quickly, making them last for months instead of days.
It looks like a small fridge and uses organic waste instead of electricity – to which few farmers in Uganda and elsewhere in Africa have regular access.
Rotting food “Much of what’s sold in markets is wasted because farmers cannot store the food.
So they have to return home and pick fresh fruit and vegetables to sell the next day.
“During the dry season very little grows here so people go hungry,” says Lawrence, while walking in the buzzing market in the northern regional capital of Kitgum, past small stalls and piles of rotting food.
The starting price is $80 (£60).
And each unit can dehydrate 10kg of mangoes in just two hours.
It has a small chamber where a gas fire is fixed, heating up a separate drying chamber above where the sliced produce is stacked in shelves.
It also has a catalytic converter which prevents harmful gases from being released during the drying process.
The alternatives to the Sparky Dryer are electric-powered dehydrators but they are too expensive, while traditional drying methods – solar dryers or open sun drying – do not work well during the rainy season and are much slower.
Yet despite its potential, Lawrence has sold very few units – seven in all.
So does his invention actually work? Three hours away by road from Kitgum, lives Joe Okettayot, Lawrence’s uncle, one of the few farmers who has brought a dryer.
Lawrence was inspired to come up with his idea after his uncle told him he was considering leaving farming.
“We used to throw away most of what we grew,” says Joe.
“Now we can dry mangoes and other fruit even when it rains, so we don’t waste anything anymore.
“We sell dehydrated products during the dry season for four times more money than the fresh produce,” Joe adds while pointing to a brick building sitting in the middle of the farm which he built thanks to this extra income Uganda’s government admits it has a massive food waste problem, but has not yet found solutions.
“We only have two processing facilities in Uganda,” says James Tumwine from the Ministry of Agriculture.
“The government doesn’t do business and private investors just aren’t aware of the huge market potential here,” he says.
Uganda plans to create food processing hubs for specific products in different regions, but progress is too slow.
Back in Kitgum, Lawrence is optimistic about the future and he wants to scale up his invention to reach parts of the world.
Food waste warrior aims to help farmers Food wasted every year in Africa could feed up to 300 million people, according to the United Nations.
Lawrence Okettayot, a 23-year-old engineering student in Uganda, hopes that his food dehydrator will tackle not just his country’s food waste problems but the world’s.
A group behind an app that helps to reduce food waste has visited Guernsey and Jersey to try and get islanders on-board.
OLIO is a free app that tries to connect neighbours with each other – so excess food can be shared and not thrown away.
Elis Joudalova, who is part of the movement, is visiting the islands after Vikki McIlroy, from Guernsey, helped start the conversation on social media.
Vikki said she was beginning to get “fed up” of always being at the shop.
“I was always spending £60 here, £70 there as well as a big shop.
So I was kind of thinking how much is everyone else spending? Is it just me? Or is there a common problem across the islands?” Since the app launched in 2015, 697,108 items of food have been shared in 41 different countries.
Engineer Lawrence Okettayot has come up with a food dehydrator that could tackle the world’s food waste crisis.
Man using ‘junk food’ to stop food waste Adam Smith wants to tackle the world’s food waste problem, and thinks his idea can feed millions of hungry people.
His Real Junk Food Project is a runner-up in the Food Chain’s 2018 Global Food Champion Award in the BBC Food and Farming Awards.
Hear more from Adam on The Food Chain from BBC World Service.
Scavenger who now runs the dump For eight years Yassine scavenged on a dump in Rabat, Morocco.
But now he is the founder of the first cooperative for waste recycling in the country.
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