In Nigeria, meat is hawked on foot with a calabash tray containing meat cuts, which may be covered with cloth or not. This exposes the meat to hazards like flies and dust. This period of exposure during street-hawking can largely depreciate the meat's quality and create food safety risks at a rapid rate. MeatDirect aims to improve the quality and shelf life of meat sold by conventional retailers through our solar-powered cooling storage and door- to-door bicycle distribution system. MeatDirect is a technology that utilizes solar panels — using sunlight to power cooling systems where meat is stored in an easy-to-move bicycle. This ensures the meat is always kept at a low temperature while improving accessibility, as the rider will be able to cover larger areas on the bicycle, an improved means of transportation compared to walking long distances. MeatDirect will substancially reduce the depreciation and contamination of our meat before, during, and after-sales by our retail street vendors to ensure healthy consumption.

Papaya powder will use the latest fruit drying technology in order to have minimal nutrition loss during food processing. This innovation provides nutritious, quality and affordable dry fruit and fruit-based snacks to our population in Ethiopia. This idea will also help to reduce post-harvest losses of fruits, especially when in season, by converting the fruit into powder for use when it is out of season. The innovation will identify techniques to minimize the risk of contamination of the papaya powder during the drying process.

Marvy Dryers aims to improve the safety of processed fish and/or meat for local and international markets. It is made for rural households involved in food processing, especially women that typically spearhead this activity. Traditionally, coal or felled woods are used for drying. The dried products end up having a great deal of carbon deposit that is unsafe for local consumption and substandard for export. This innovation addresses both health and environmental safety, and it adopts the use of renewable energy for the construction of dryers that are easy to use by small and medium-scale rural processors. The dryers have doors that keep the products free from airborne pathogens during the period of drying to ensure food safety. At the same time, heat can be regulated and timed. Therefore, the dryers are automated — making work easier and faster, which results in increased productivity and translates to increased income and profits.

Somhumus is making fertilizers from organic waste to the improve production of safe nutritious crops in Ethiopia. We do so by collecting organic food waste, moving it to fertilizer beds and adding dry grasses to produce the fertilizer. Natural humus-rich soil from fruits, vegetables and other crop waste will be converted to good quality, organic fertilizer. This innovation helps to transform food waste into food gain, as it will provide economic value to the people and the country of Ethiopia in general.

With Scratop's fertilizer recipe, the utilization of farm losses and its proper conversion into healthy soil food (organic fertilizer) is possible. Soil and crops utilize our organic fertilizer within the period of growth for optimal production yields. We believe that food safety is not limited to handling and processing; food safety starts with the soil. This is why we believe organic fertilizers in Nigeria can contribute to improved food safety and are preferred by consumers over chemical alternatives. With this innovation, food crop farmers can monetize bio-waste and afford locally produced, high-quality organic fertilizer. Our fertilizer supports the production of quality and healthy food crops through our climate currency model, a direct partnership program between farmers and Scratop.

There are more than 1,500 milk shops in Addis Ababa that sell unprocessed milk products for low-income group consumers. One of the products is Ergo, a traditional fermented milk in Ethiopia made through fermented milk from raw milk. It is prone to food hazards such as microbial spoilage, as it is not pasteurized. The solution we propose is pasteurization and incubation in the process of fermenting milk to produce yogurt. This will avoid the Staph aureus, E. coli and salmonella infections of fermented milk as pasteurization kills all pathogenic microbes. In addition, our innovation prolongs the three day shelf life of Ergo to one month. Pasteurized milk will be inoculated with Yoba probiotic yogurt cultures that have the dual purpose of enhancing the health and nutrition of consumers. The solution focuses on piloting appropriate tools, such as pasteurizing stoves, thermometers, and incubation chambers, adaptable to small producers in Addis Ababa. It will also help diversify nutritious food products in the market at an accessible cost for low-income consumers.

Echotronics is a rentable refrigerator cooling box that helps keep fresh food safe and in good condition over time. This technology provides affordable cold chain logistics for smallholder farmers and fresh food vendors in Nigeria. The innovation is a smart, temperature-controlled cooling box powered by solar energy and water. Echotronics provides optimum temperature for keeping fresh food produce well over a period of time throughout the after- harvest supply chain and handling.

Processed whole egg powder can eliminate the risk of Salmonella in fresh eggs. Processing also provides a long shelf life, easy-to-measure portions and application in local stews like 'shero' and 'meser wet'. The whole egg powder also contains supplemental fortification with minerals and vitamins. Our company, Ethio-gabana Trading, is available to provide processed whole egg powder and fortified supplementary food for children, lactating mothers and pregnant women to improve daily nutritional intake. In addition to this, by empowering women through breaking gender bias, we create economic growth by sourcing table eggs for our whole egg powder directly from women-owned poultry farms.

The inflatable tunnel solar dryer utilizes solar energy to remove excess water present in food, thereby reducing spoilage and making more safe food available to the large Nigerian population. It can be installed and used across different communities and regions in Nigeria, and it can be adapted to a wide range of foods. The dryer provides a sustainable solution to challenges encountered with traditional sun drying. Risks from improper sun drying include exposure to rain and foreign matter, poor quality, and contaminants like aflatoxins, a major food safety concern in Nigeria. This innovation is also a relatively low-cost and energy-saving alternative to other existing methods aimed at preserving food (e.g., oven drying, smoking, and freezing). The solar dryer could benefit farmers by reducing loss incurred from spoilage of their produce, increased profit from having more products available for sale, and more employment opportunities such as the export of dried foods.

The innovation is to improve traditional kocho processing to create a safe and standard quality product. The indigenous processing methods of kocho is carried out in the backyard of the farmer's home. This process uses natural microbes present in the substrate and age-old processing equipment. This fermentation process of kocho is often lenghty, labor-intensive and can lead to inconsistent and unhygienic product quality. Thus far, little is known about the roles of microbial communities found in kocho and their roles of fermenting, spoilage, and pathogenic microbes. Moreover, traditional knowledge is generally owned by women. This innovation aims to design and develop processing equipment and starter cultures to optimize, standardize and transformation of kocho into a commercial-level product while improving the quality of life for female communities.