Professor Klein Ileleji: Solar Dehydrator among top-10 innovations at 1st All-African Post-Harvest Congress and Exhibit
Professor Klein Ileleji: Solar Dehydrator among top-10 innovations at 1st All-African Post-Harvest Congress and Exhibit
The multipurpose solar dehydrator developed by Dr. Klein Ileleji and team under the USAID Funded Feed-the-Future Innovation Lab for Postharvest Handling and Food Processing (FPL) placed among the Top 10 innovations at the Postharvest Innovation Challenge held during the recent 1st All-African Post-Harvest Congress and Exhibit.
The event, from March 28 to 31, 2017, was held in Nairobi, Kenya. Those with the Top 10 innovations were given the opportunity to exhibit their innovations at the Innovators Village Booth and also pitched for 5 minutes at the last plenary session. Dr. Ileleji's innovation was ranked 6th of the top 10 and was awarded a certificate and $3,000 cash prize. There were 120 entries to the competition, with only 112 going through all 3 stages of the review process, which included a Skype interview as the last stage with the top 20 entries. Dr. Ileleji is currently pursuing commercialization of his solar dryer with help from Purdue Foundry through a startup, JUA Technologies International LLC.