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Hurukuro IDE graduation assignment - One pager
1) Brief description of company and current status
Hurukuro (www.hurukuro.com and https://www.f6s.com/hurukuro) is a company that
was founded in early 2014, with the objective of creating an agricultural digital value
chain for farmers in order to boost agricultural activity and livelihood of rural populations
in Africa. In 2014 we were the technical partners for a national portal that was built to
assist agricultural extension workers with access to information. This was a multimillion
Euro project and includes several NGOs and the Ministry of Agriculture.
We have since started working on a project with 6300 female rural farmers. We have an
SMS solution that offers agronomic advice, weather info and market prices. We have
sealed a deal with the largest tomato processing company in Zimbabwe which has a
capacity of handling 90 000 tons of tomatoes per day. We are also on track to launch a
mobisite by soon. We also have several partners for our social impact initiatives
including NGO Empowerment works and a franchise from German social enterprise Benergy.
2) The design challenge in product a/o business model terms
The challenge is this; in Zimbabwe and in Africa, there is a massive of fresh produce
being either damaged or lost in transit. In fact in some cases it is estimated to be as high
as 25 to 40% according to FAO. This has led to a situation where farmers have lost
revenue in terms of produce sales and also the opportunity cost of inputs and labour
wasted by farmers in growing the crops.
The challenge is to develop and design an uber style solution with a specialized container
that can avoid damage and losses in transit for produce. This is the main project we
would want to collaborate on.
3) Potential use of CVD (Context Variation by Design); to be used if necessary
CVD would be used to assist us in identifying an ideal solution to this challenge and
assisting in developing that solution for multiple settings without multiple redesign.
4) Practicalities (period, location etc)
We would like the research period to be around April 2017, as we believe that would be
the ideal time to host a graduate as this is the normal harvest season for horticultural
produce for farmers. Locations to be discussed.
Interested? Contact JC
([email protected])
Diehl
([email protected])
or
Wouter
Kersten