Using a smart egg incubator to solve egg incubation challenges in poultry farming.

Poultry farming in Nigeria contributes 26% of Nigeria’s agricultural GDP. Farmers rear domestic birds like chickens and others for meat and eggs as a source of protein. However, poultry farming is faced with challenges. One of the challenges faced by poultry farmers in Nigeria is egg incubation. According to statistics from the World Bank in 2020, the Nigerian agricultural sector currently employs 35% of the population.

Egg incubators facilitate the hatching of healthy chicks for poultry farming. The high cost of egg incubators is a problem for poultry farmers who want to buy them, and this affects their poultry output. Furthermore, some of these incubators are powered by electricity. Therefore, when there is a power outage, the incubation process is at risk because temperature plays a vital role in the egg incubation process.

Kabir Abdulrazak, a poultry farmer and innovator, has come up with a brilliant solution to tackle these challenges. He designed an automated smart egg incubator powered by both electricity and gas. The incubator solves the problem of power supply by switching to gas whenever electricity is cut off. The system also regulates the temperature to ensure that the incubation cycle stays safe. The best part of Kabir’s innovation is that the materials used in developing the smart incubator are locally sourced. This gives more poultry farmers access to a cost-friendly incubator.

i-FAIR

The Innovation Fellowship for Aspiring Inventors and Researchers is an initiative for raising a generation of innovators, inventors and researchers in Nigeria.
The 6-month innovation start-up is an initiative of the Israeli Embassy in Nigeria and the Office of the Vice President of Nigeria. It provides needed workspace, equipment and mentoring to participants, to enable them to transform their idea into inventions, innovations into solutions and prototypes, ready for industrial uptake.

As a participant at the Innovation Fellowship for Aspiring Researchers (i-FAIR) Kabir under the mentorship and support of experts from the fellowship, was able to not only come up with a proof of concept but also develop a working product.