Foday M. Kamara, Sierra Leone's Most Prolific Inventor
One of Kamara’s most recent inventions is a multi-purpose dryer.
“The invention help(s) farmers to dehydrate produce before storage,” he told 9RiverMedia.
“Over a year ago, we designed and constructed an electrically powered version that was installed at Lion Mountain Company in Bo and has been in operation for over a year,” he added. “The technology is adaptable for drying of produce such as cacao, coffee, ginger, etc... Before now, a dryer of the same magnitude was imported,” he said.
During the raining season, when there's little sunshine, Sierra Leonean farmers face lots of problems in drying rice, corn, cacao, cashew nuts, pepper, cassava chips, onions, groundnuts, soybeans, corn/maize, and Moringa leaves.
“The FINIC invention will meet the pockets of the farmers. Instead of diesel fuel to generate the heat required for the dehydration process, our technology uses burn oil, which is five times cheaper than diesel fuel,” Kamara said.
FINIC, which is short for Fomel (Foday + Melvin) Industry and National Industrialization Center, is a leading agribusiness in Sierra Leone. The company specializes in grating machines, coffee and rice mills, juice extraction machines, palm fruit threshers, and now drying machines.
Kamara, a German-trained automotive engineer and longtime fan of mechanical things, came up with his first invention sixteen years ago, after teaching at Sierra Leone's Government Technical Institute at Kissy Dockyard and the Sierra Leone Road Transport Corporation (SLRTC).
“When I was a training manager at the SLRTC, I had the opportunity to work with young people,” he told Africa Agribusiness Magazine in July 2014. “ I saw that after a period of training, we found youths engaged in doing things that were diametrically opposed to what they had learned at a training school. I said to them, why don’t we use that talent to establish something where we could have a beginning?”
So Kamara and his team went out and got scrap metals to build an engineer vise.
“It is basically a device that holds the job in place while the engineer works on it. It is a form of equipment. It holds the job in place while work is performed on it,” he said to Africa Agribusiness.
They made more than twenty of the devices, which sold for over six hundred thousand Leones at the time, and Kamara and his company FINIC were on their way, coming up with scores of solutions to Sierra Leonean problems.
“Our goal was to do something to minimize our endless importation of everything we need for our daily use in this country,” Kamara said to Africa Agri Business.
“ We are convinced that if a technology is to be sustained, it has to be owned by the people. So
Kamara and his company have been addressing the problems faced by farmers for more than a decade. They have manufactured the palm oil processing plant, with a capacity to produce 2 barrels of 200 liters each, beating out labor-intensive methods.
Another machine they have manufactured is the Condom Vending Machine.
“ I think we are the first in Africa to have designed and manufactured a condom vending machine. Sierra Leone should be awarded a prize for that venture,” he told Africa Agribusiness.In recognition of his work, Kamara was awarded the Order of Rokel in 2011 for engineering and entrepreneurship.
Each year, FINIC enrolls thirty people for a three-year training
For more information, contact Foday Melvin KamaraManaging Director - FINIC, Tel: +232-76- 601956. Email (finicone@yahoo.com)
With a food dehydrator, that question does not even need to come up. best food dehydrator
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