A group of entrepreneurs in Ghana is turning discarded banana and plantain stems into a more sustainable sanitary napkin to fight period poverty.
According to The World Bankhalf a billion women and girls worldwide suffer from period poverty (lack of access to menstrual products and adequate facilities for menstrual hygiene) and UNESCO report estimates that 10 percent of girls in sub-Saharan Africa miss up to a fifth of their school year due to period poverty.
Omar Farooq MubarakChief Finance Officer and Co-Founder Kodu technologyexplains that the company has embarked on research to discover ways to use wasted banana and plantain stems from Ghana’s agricultural sector.
“Our original plan was to make paper out of it, and we discovered that banana and plantain fibers have very high absorbency, which prompted us to do this work,” he says, adding that the greatest potential was found in sanitary napkin production.
“Using banana fiber, a by-product of the agricultural industry, we are developing a circular economy, minimizing waste and benefiting local farmers,” says Umar Farouk, adding that the project is positioned as a catalyst for positive environmental and socioeconomic change. In addition, it helps provide a solution to period poverty.
“Improving the banana fiber extraction process was one of the biggest hurdles of our sanitary napkin project,” he says, “Extracting banana fiber and refining it for our sanitary napkins is a complex process that involves both chemical and mechanical processes.”
Umar Farouk explains that the reuse of agricultural residues is a science-backed strategy that supports environmental sustainability and agroecological principles, but it has been difficult to ensure the strength, absorbency and hygiene criteria of the fiber while remaining cost effective.
“It is imperative to address these technical hurdles in order to manufacture environmentally conscious menstrual products that meet industry regulations and consumer demands,” he says.
In 2023 Kodu Technologies were awarded over $8000 as winners of the Circular Economy Competition supported by the European Union.
Ghana
Umar Farouk grew up in Wa in the Upper West Region of Ghana and is a licensed nutritionist and served as the Secretary of her university’s student representative council.
“This experience equipped me with communication skills and also helped me to work with rural people in Ghana,” he says.
Umar Farouk explains that researching answers to global challenges requires the perspectives and ideas contributed by scientists from the Global South.
“Their unique experiences, drawn from diverse cultural, environmental and socio-economic backgrounds, provide a more comprehensive understanding of complex issues,” he says, adding that it is necessary to consider a wider range of perspectives.
“By working together, scientists from different backgrounds can solve global problems more effectively and inclusively, which encourages creativity and persistence in the face of adversity,” says Umar Farouk, adding that researchers from the Global South can have a deeper understanding the delicate and pressing needs of their communities, ensuring that solutions are durable and appropriate in their environment.
Circular Economy in Africa
Another African entrepreneur working on the circular economy solution is Dorcas Lukwesa in Zambia: she is building a social enterprise there around mobile smart bamboo gardens for farmers with limited space, limited soil and less water.
Lukwesa, founder of Mobile Aquaponics and CAMFED Union member studying at EARTH University, a sustainable agriculture university in Costa Rica, says her main work is in mobile aquaponics.
“These gardens use a natural recirculating system known as aquaponics,” he says, adding that aquaponics is the cultivation of fish and vegetables in an engineered recirculating ecosystem, which uses natural cycles of bacteria to convert fish waste into plant nutrients.
Lukwesa’s Mobile Aquaponics is a social enterprise dedicated to providing a resilient response to climate change, promoting food security under the climate crisis to reduce poverty in Zambia.
“Through our urban farm demonstration, we hope to provide agricultural training to more than 2,000 farmers in the next five years,” she says, adding that she hopes to create 20 new job opportunities for women and youth to enable families to generate additional income and to foster a collaborative community in the project.