Anthony Ilalio Mbunju (Tanzania), Birtukan Feyisa Megersa (Ethiopia), and Charles Muiruri Munga (Kenya) are part of the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program, from the Class of 2024. Recently, they presented a business idea they had been working on for months to the jury of the Wege Prize, an annual worldwide competition for university students that promotes the creation of innovative solutions to major global challenges including climate change, biodiversity loss, and food security.
According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the world’s population is expected to increase by more than a third by 2050. By then, more than 10 billion people will need food systems that can adapt to climate change and resource scarcity. With this in mind, Anthony, Charles, and Birtukan focused their project on addressing food security in East Africa, including sub-Saharan countries.
Senene Farm is the solution the team created to produce a source of protein-rich food that is uncommon in many parts of the world: grasshoppers. According to Anthony, in his country of Tanzania people often eat grasshoppers (called senene in Swahili), which are used to prepare dishes with great cultural and nutritional value.
“Usually, people harvest this type of grasshopper during the rainy season, but currently, due to climate change, it can no longer be harvested as before. The supply in the market has even been affected. Grasshoppers are a very cheap source of protein, as more than 37% of their body mass consists of proteins, so people have been using them because many families do not have the economic resources to buy other types of proteins like beef or chicken. In Africa, there are many malnutrition problems, which we want to solve with Senene Farm,” Anthony says.
Thanks to another competition for innovative solutions, the team recently participated and won seed capital, and with those funds they were able to buy a property in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where they will build the necessary infrastructure to produce and harvest grasshoppers under various climatic conditions. They also hope to have space to process the insects after harvest and create specific products such as flour.
The exciting news is that their dream is now tangible. On the day the students presented their project to the Wege Prize jury they found out they won second place. This means they now have the necessary capital to make their project a reality and turn a business idea that emerged one day while having lunch together in the university cafeteria into a reality.
“We have achieved this thanks to the University providing us with a space to meet and experiment. And we have achieved this thanks to the fact that all three of us received a scholarship from Mastercard Foundation, which from the beginning allowed us to come to Costa Rica to study at EARTH and materialize these types of ideas. We also need to mention the support from professors of the Entomology and Food Processing courses, and, in general, from the entire Academic Unit and Faculty who believed in our potential,” says Birtukan.
As graduation approaches, the team is filled with anticipation for the future of Senene Farm. They plan to travel to Tanzania and start implementing their business model, with dreams of expanding to other African countries. Charles shares, “The University has given us the ability to use critical thinking and a lot of knowledge to be leaders of change, but it has also given us something essential: a global network. We have EARTHian colleagues in many African countries, and we know they can join our project or help us with data, research, or purchasing materials. This network, combined with our passion and dedication, will be the driving force behind our future growth.”
We congratulate Senene Farm on this achievement. We know they have worked with dedication and passion to improve the quality of life of thousands of people on the African continent.