Household & Enterprise
Projects that pay for themselves: a press, a mould, a dryer, a batch of soap. Each one is small enough for a household workshop and proven enough to sell from.
Indirect Solar Food Dryer
A timber cabinet with a glazed heat collector that dries fruit, vegetables and fish faster and cleaner than open sun, without bleaching the produce.
Cold-Process Soap from Local Oils
Turn shea butter, palm or coconut oil into hard bar soap you can use at home or sell — a reliable first micro-enterprise product.
Hand-Cranked Maize Sheller
A simple drum-and-plate sheller that strips maize cobs several times faster than hand shelling, without bruising the grain.
Zeer Pot-in-Pot Evaporative Cooler
Two clay pots with wet sand between them, dropping the inner temperature by 10 – 15 °C and keeping vegetables saleable for days instead of hours.
Manual Shea Butter Press
A bridge press with a screw jack that squeezes oil from roasted, ground shea kernels — cutting hours of hand-kneading and raising yield per basin.
Improved Fish Smoking Kiln
A chorkor-style stacked-tray kiln that smokes far more fish per load with less firewood and much less smoke in the operator's face.
Bicycle Cargo Trailer
A welded or bolted single-axle trailer with a flexible hitch that lets one bicycle move 80 – 100 kg of water, produce or tools over rough village roads.
Coil-Built Clay Water Jar
Build a wide-bellied storage jar by hand from coils of local clay and pit-fire it — cool water storage that costs only labour and fuel.
Universal Nut Sheller
Cast a concrete rotor and stator with a tapered gap, crank it, and shell groundnuts fifty times faster than by hand without crushing the kernels.
Pedal-Driven Cassava Grater
Drive a punched-sheet grating drum from a bicycle chainset so one person can grate a sack of cassava in minutes instead of an afternoon of knuckle work.
Hand Screw Palm Oil Press
Press digested palm fruit in a perforated steel cage with a screw jack, lifting oil recovery well above hand-squeezing while cutting the work in half.
Hand Grain Mill Station
Set a plate or stone mill on a solid waist-high bench with a good hopper and catch tray, and turn grinding from a back-breaking chore into a steady twenty-minute job.
Beeswax Candle Making
Render comb wax from your top-bar hives and dip or mould clean-burning candles — a high-margin product from what most beekeepers throw away.
Recycled Tyre Sandal Workshop
Cut soles from worn car tyres and strap them with inner tube or leather — a sandal that outlasts anything in the market, made from waste.
Handmade Recycled Paper
Pulp waste paper with banana fibre or grass, pull sheets on a simple mould and deckle, and sell notebooks, cards and packaging from rubbish.
Sisal Rope Twisting Rig
A hand-cranked rope walk that lays sisal or banana fibre into three-strand rope — a genuinely useful product from a plant most people cut and burn.