This archive report was first published on 23 November 2019.
Kenya's staple food, ugali, is set to get a major makeover with the introduction of instant ugali flour and an electric-powered cooking machine.
At the University of Eldoret, the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences has developed Unga Nutritious, a flour that only requires the addition of hot water to make the meal. The user simply needs to knead the mixture for a short while, and ugali is ready in under a minute.
Prof Violet Mugalavai, the brain behind the instant ugali flour, explained that it is a simple solution to the wastage of food after harvest.
Meanwhile, the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (Jkuat) is working on a machine that can cook ugali automatically. The machine, which was developed by final-year students a few years ago, uses a standardized recipe and ratios, conserves energy, and performs mass cooking within the shortest time possible.
Benson Kariuki, the director of intellectual property management at Jkuat, believes that the machine will be of great help to hotels, schools, and other places where ugali is cooked in large quantities.
“It is very easy to adopt and sell to schools, churches, and the big hotels that make a lot of ugali every day,” Kariuki said.
The machine was created by Evans Omondi, Clement Kirui Kiprotich, Alfayo Anyangu, and Stephen Ondimu. Kariuki noted that there is a laid-down structure on how students and the university should share revenues if an invention is monetized.
For the machine to be patented locally, it will undergo an elaborate process that involves a lot of correspondence with the Kenya Industrial Property Institute (Kipi).
