Some 82.5 per cent of harvested bananas are used in industries for banana wine and juice, 10 per cent in traditional wine, 5 per cent for consumption while 2.5 per cent is used in dessert, according to statistics from Rwanda Agriculture Board (RAB).

Given that the banana industry in Rwanda is huge, primarily for wine and consumption, two young innovators have come up with the mechanism that will see its consistency in ripening, thus ensures industries, cooperatives, banana wine producers and consumers have enough ripe bananas for their productivity and consumption.

Last year, with the help of their lecturer, the electronics and telecommunication students—Valens Ngendahimana, Genevieve Uwamariya came up with the smart modern banana ripening project.

The two are final year students at IPRC Tumba, Rulindo District.

The idea, they said, is to streamline the process of banana ripening.

 Starting out and inspiration

A few year ago the project developers paid a visit to a banana processing industry in the Northern Province.

After finding out some of the challenges the processers normally face in the banana ripening process, they decided to do something about it.

The processors were incurring losses in their business.  

They also discovered that more than 30 banana processing industries in the country were using traditional methods to process the bananas.

"When bananas are ripened traditionally, the general hygiene is not observed as the method include digging a hole underground for the bananas to get ripe,” said Ngendahimana.

Because of this method, there is still low productivity and output of bananas, according the innovators.

In quest to find a solution to this, the duo thought of an alternative modern method that will see quick ripening of bananas and also, cut the duration it takes to ripen.

Early last year, they came up with a modern technology called known as ‘Smart Urwina project’

The technology uses sensors to monitor temperature and humidity.

It reduced the time the bananas take to ripen from seven day to between 2 and 3 days.

Because of this, last year they participated hackathon competition organized by National Industrial Research and Development Agency (NIRDA).

The project emerged the best and hence was incubated by NIRDA for three months, where they were they received mentorship, technical and business training as well as financial support.

The impact

Olivier Nsabimana, the Innovation Hub manager at NIRDA"s STEM Lab said the students have been able to leverage on the skills they acquired from school in order come up with this project.

 "Equipping them with defining business objectives of the projects, lining their technical excursion with where the project is going in terms of how it’s fit in into the business landscape, is a great achievement for any innovative student,” he said.

The duo said the project will positively impact banana farmers, because once the industry gains momentum, they will be able to sale their produce at favourable prices.

The smart project also seeks to empower rural women, mainly the one engaged in banana farming.