Country of Origin:
Zambia
WLS Award:
2004-2005
About:
Graduate Program: MSc Food Technology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
Background & Goals: Yande Kapinda’s goals included training agricultural workers in post-harvest management and food management, marketing, and analytical methods in warehouses and food laboratories in order to enable them to compete with large-scale producers.
Post-Degree Projects: Yande Kapinda graduated cum laude with her MSc in Food Technology, following the option of Post-harvest and Food Preservation Engineering. Following her degree, Kapinda enrolled in a year of complementary courses in tropical agriculture. Prior to this, she had been working with small-scale farmers and grain handlers, training them in grain quality assessment and good warehouse management practices. The staple food of Zambia is maize and approximately 80 percent of the nation’s total maize production is grown by small-scale farmers. Unfortunately, their lack of knowledge in basic grain-grading and good post-harvest management has seen them trading on the market at a great loss. With the knowledge she gained from her study program, Kapinda hoped to help alleviate poverty in the lives of the farmers.
