In the world: Design summit’s inventions find willing buyers
It was a simple device, consisting of two thin metal sheets mounted so one could be pulled horizontally across the other (which had tiny bumps on its surface), leaving just a narrow gap in between. But as simple as it was, the contraption was capable of quickly and efficiently stripping the husks off tiny seeds from a tree called moringa — a trick that could make the versatile plant into a more profitable cash crop for poor farmers in Ghana.In fact, the rapidly developed prototype, designed, built and tested in less than five weeks by a team of six people who had never met before and who had little to no engineering experience, was such a success that farmers who gathered at a recent showcase and demonstration in Kumasi, Ghana’s second largest city, couldn’t wait to get their hands on it and asked if they could buy the prototype right...