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AFRICA HUB

The West Africa Regional Innovation Hub (RIH) is located in Senegal at the Economic Community of West African States Center of Excellence of ISRA–CERAAS.  The ASMC will coordinate work with AFRICA RISING and other entities such as the Soybean Innovation Lab (SIL). The West Africa Innovation Hub will work with the private sector including financial institutions and governmental agencies to create an enabling environment for commercialization and scaling of technologies.


The RIH will collaborate with the Burkina Faso Hub to facilitate technology transfer and knowledge sharing, leveraging the current technology identification, development, and deployment work as well as models for private sector engagement. The Soybean Innovation Lab (SIL) is active in Ghana and promotes the local production and use of a multi-crop thresher. SIL has expressed interest in leveraging ASMC expertise and experience to scale up and increase local capacity for production and use of the thresher. Additionally, the Archer Daniels Midland Institute (ADMI) for the Prevention of Postharvest Loss at the University of Illinois has expertise using various postharvest loss prevention strategies, which will be explored in Senegal and Burkina Faso.

Current & Upcoming Activities

  • In Senegal, ASMC is working to develop the Regional Innovation Hub for West Africa. These activities include establishing a Hub Advisory Board and a Technology Readiness Assessment. 

  • ASMC is currently implementing a Technology Readiness Assessment (TRA) along with a Scaling Questionnaire in Burkina Faso.

    • The TRA will assess the potential for the adoption of a technology in current non-users. The goal of the TRA is to obtain information on the challenges for adoption from potential target groups. The TRA will also assess current users to obtain information on the challenges that were faced in acquiring/using the technology.

    • The Scaling Questionnaire is designed to facilitate a constructive and systematic analysis of the challenges of scaling the technologies (i.e. maize planter). It will aid in identifying impediments to scaling and allow ASMC to develop an appropriate scaling strategy.

Past Activities

  • In Burkina Faso, A final fabrication session was held from November 18-22, 2019 at the Hub demo site at Koumbia. The planter prototype was improved according to the advice of farmers. The chopper prototype was also improved. These improvements were made through the participation of local blacksmiths, Tillers International (Mr. Robert Burdick) and Michigan State University (Dr. Timothy Harrigan).

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