Meals safety is intently associated to water availability. A shortage of fresh, unpolluted water sources undermines agricultural productiveness. Crop yields decline, livestock undergo, and communities develop into weak to starvation and malnutrition.
In Africa, most farmers depend upon seasonal rainfall and variable floor water to develop crops and lift livestock. Based on the UN Meals and Agriculture Group (FAO), solely seven p.c of arable land in Africa is irrigated. Sub-Saharan Africa has even much less, at about 4 p.c of complete cropland irrigated.
Africa holds giant reserves of groundwater, however most farmers can’t afford the power wanted to entry it. Conventional energy sources for irrigation pumps — reminiscent of gasoline, diesel, or electrical energy — are expensive and infrequently unreliable.
Because of this, solar-powered irrigation methods have develop into an interesting choice for small-scale farmers, despite the fact that they require important preliminary funding.
In 2019, two Egyptian entrepreneurs, Ragy Ramadan and Mohamed Khaled, based NoorNation to deal with the often-intertwined issues of power poverty, water shortage, and meals insecurity.
NoorNation manufactures solar-powered irrigation methods, and its flagship product, LifeBox, combines power era, water pumping, desalination, and sensible monitoring in a single, transportable unit.
LifeBox has bifacial photo voltaic panels for elevated power throughput and, the corporate claims, can produce as much as 600m³ of desalinated water and 130kWp of fresh power. Customers can remotely monitor the set up and optimise their power use and irrigation schedules from an IoT dashboard.
NoorNation claims its methods have desalinated 6 million liters of brackish water, saved farmers roughly $400,000 in power prices, and diminished about 2,000 tons of CO₂ emissions by changing diesel turbines.
The startup gives pay-as-you-use irrigation providers to small-scale farmers through a mannequin it calls SIaaS (Photo voltaic Irrigation as a Service). It leases the LifeBox to the farmers on a versatile cost plan and costs them based mostly on the pumping time they use. The corporate says farmers sometimes purchase full possession of the LifeBox models inside 5 to seven years.
NoorNation founders, Ragy Ramadan and Mohamed Khaled
“Noor” means mild in Arabic, which the corporate says displays its mission to carry illumination to underserved areas and off-grid communities within the Center East and throughout Africa. With present operations in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, the corporate has lively plans to increase into Sub-Saharan African markets.
NoorNation is a part of our highlight on local weather tech and deep tech corporations the world over. You could find extra details about NoorNation and LifeBox on the corporate’s web site.
