Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Graduate Student Develops Nut Harvesting Tools in Ghana with International Development Design Summit

MLA and MArch student Delia Kulukundis presented her team’s design for one-acre farmers’ Groundnut Threshing Tools at the annual International Development Design Summit yesterday. For the first time, the summit is being held outside of the United States, in Kumasi, Ghana.

Kulukundis and approximately 70 other participants from 21 countries have spent the past five weeks tackling a problem in small teams that produce innovative, affordable, scalable technologies to assist the 2.6 billion people in the world earning less than $2-a-day.

The summit was started by Massachusetts Institute of Technology senior lecturer Amy Smith, a recipient of the MacArthur “Genius Grant” award.

Kulukundis will take part in demonstrating the finished prototype of her team’s project at Maker Faire Africa, a celebration of African ingenuity, in Accra, Ghana from August 14th-16th.

International Development Design Summit
http://2009.iddsummit.org/

For more information, please see:

Poster for Groundnut Threshing Project