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LAGOS - The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is funding research to develop fortified excreta pellets for use in agriculture to improve soil fertility and urban sanitation infrastructure in sub-Saharan Africa.
The foundation’s Grand Challenges Explorations (GCE) programme has given $100,000 to a Ghanaian researcher to tackle declining soil fertility and agricultural productivity.
The project will also address sanitation in sub Saharan Africa, which has failed to keep up with the rapid pace of urbanization. The result is that excreta from latrines and septic tanks are being disposed off into the environment.
“Recycling readily available excreta has the potential to both reduce the environmental pollution burden and prolong the life span of treatment plants, while also significantly improving agricultural productivity,” Olufunke Cofie, a researcher at the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), said in a statement.
Grand Challenges Explorations (GCE) funds scientists and researchers worldwide to explore ideas that can break the mould in how to solve persistent development and global health challenges. Initial grants of $100,000 are awarded twice a year. Successful projects have the opportunity to receive a follow-on grant of up to $1 million.
Other scientists who have received the same amount are from Kenya, Philippines and Ecuador.
“GCE winners are expanding the pipeline of ideas for serious global health and development challenges where creative thinking is most urgently needed. These grants are meant to spur on new discoveries that could ultimately save millions of lives,” said Chris Wilson, director of Global Health Discovery at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
This project will centre on using fecal sludge as a potentially promising source of organic matter and nutrients for the poor agricultural soils found in sub-Saharan Africa, through the production of safe, hygienic fecal sludge based fertilizer pellets to correct the negative perception of communities with regards to use of ‘human manure’ in agriculture.
The project will build on a pilot co-composting study in Ghana, and the product to be developed would be applicable to many other locations in Sub Saharan Africa.
“The award is encouraging in the sense that one can go one step (pelletization) further in the research process. It is not an end itself but we can answer one more research question”, says Dr Cofie.
