The IoT Helps Improve Food Production in the 3rd World

Now here’s an IoT initiative we can all get behind -- Sanku (Project Healthy Children) is using Vodafone's IoT SIM and USB Connect technology to improve the efficiency of small flour mills across Africa.

As Sanku points out, over 2.3 billion people worldwide lack the proper vitamins and minerals, leading to physical and intellectual deficiencies. And food fortification – the addition of key vitamins and minerals (e.g. iron, folic acid, iodine, vitamin A, and zinc) – is “the most cost effective health intervention available.”

The organization uses "dosifiers" to fortify flour in small African mills. And while food fortification has been prevalent since the 1920s – commonly fortified foods include salt, maize flour, wheat flour, sugar, vegetable oil, and rice – Sanku is using a relatively new technology (IoT) to augment it.

Sanku uses Vodafone’s IoT SIM and USB Connect technology to monitor the mills’ daily production data – sent in real-time – on a central dashboard. According to ZDnet, the data collected includes flour produced, nutrients dispensed, people reached, and any technical issues.

"In the past we had to visit flour mills physically to retrieve data from the dosifier machines manually," said Felix Brooks-Church, Sanku's co-founder, president, and CEO.. "This was at a large cost to the organization, and required extra staffing, vehicles, and overall logistical management."

"The IoT is enabling us to completely automate our operations and how we run our business."

Read more about this story here: https://www.zdnet.com/article/an-internet-of-things-initiative-with-a-humanitarian-purpose/