Social economic context
The Gambia, the so called “smiling coast of Africa”. A country in west Africa bordering Senegal and the Atlantic Ocean. The country consists a relatively narrow strip along the Gambia River. It’s about 250 Kilometers long and a couple kilometers wide.It’s the smallest country in the African mainland.
Even though the tourist economy in the Gambia has grown the past decade. It remains one of the weakest economies in the world. 61.3% of the population lives below the poverty line. What does that mean? That means that half of the population on an average amount of $2 a day.
Food and drinks
The Gambian cuisine is quite simple which usually consists rice with fish, meat and vegetables in sauce. On of the most famous dishes in the Gambia is called Domoda. This dish has peanuts as main ingredient. Other typically Gambian dishes are Yassa, Caldo and Pepeh soup.
Even though most of the population is muslim, is one of the most famous drinks in the Gambia the Julbrew. A beer brewed in the capital Banjul.
Previous Group
In 2013 there was a group that travelled to the Gambia for the same project as ours. In the time being there, they built two Solar Dryers. They sold one of the dryers to My Farm, the other to Kairoh Garden. Despite their design was good, there were also some faults.
First the Dryers were way to expensive for the local people because they used a lot of expensive materials like steel. This lead us to the second fault which is that the Dryers weren’t sustainable. They used a lot of imported materials. Despite this the dryers broke very fast.
There is also an other project addressing the same problem by Fred van Hessen. He is also investing in the building of Solar dryers but the difference with our project is that he tries to build way bigger dryers meanwhile we try to build smaller and transportable ones. Despite this difference we are positive that he could help us with a lot of things.