GIRLS LEADING IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY: Curbing Post Harvest losses in Cameroon.
In recent times women have been stepping up powerfully in the centre stage of leadership, business, and innovation making the wold a better place hence defying patriarchy and cultural beliefs that limit the female gender to home making and procreation. Today, it is no doubt that given the same opportunities, boy and girls can excel in previously male dominated fields like science and technology.
Meet Kengran Liza Vernyuy
This month we focus on a female student from the university of Bamenda in the North West Region of Cameroon who is making a difference in innovation and entrepreneurship. Kengran Liza Vernyuy is a 4th year Agricultural Engineering student in the university of Bamenda with a burning desire to eliminate post-harvest losses of fruits and vegetables in Cameroon to its barest minimum.
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As a solution, Liza has design a fruit and vegetables dehydrator, capable of dehydrating fresh fruits in eight hours with an average energy consumption of 400 XCFA (less than a dollar). Liza believes her innovation will help solve some of the major problems encountered by local farmers and foster the work towards sustainable Agriculture. The cost of the dehydrator stands at 280 000 XFA ($510) implying that if provided funding to improve her work, Liza can produce at a large scale greatly reducing the cost to an amount affordable to the local farmer. Being her very first major innovation as a student, it is safe to say that she is a potential force to reckon with in the agro-scientific sector.
Liza’s advice to her young peers especially girls is this; “learn to be creative , Believe you can make it. Try and if you fail, try again but don’t give up, read books and do a lot of research”.
She also has a recommendation to stakeholders and Investors “ I would like them to know there are so many youths out there with great ideas that can transform our country, they should visit professional schools each year and choose maybe one or two students with good projects and sponsor them. This will motivate the others to think outside of the box and make our country a better place” Vernyuy adds.
Paul LOLA