Hi everyone, I’m Chieh-Hao Shang (Schao), an Industrial Design Engineering Master student. Project DagUp is my graduation project of the topic “Design for sustainability: fish preservation in Tanzania”. This project will be collaborating with Sagar Energy Solutions (SES), a social enterprise located in Tanzania and has been working together with the local fishery for years to develop sustainable solutions.
Catching dagaa (a sort of sardine) is one of the most important activities of the places surrounding Lake Victoria to earn their livelihood. Moreover, dagaa is regarded as one of the keys to resolving malnutrition! To reach more people, it has to be properly preserved. However, the current process is quite unhygienic for human consumption, as you can see in the picture, and yes, those are fish on the sand.
To address this issue, SES is developing a greenhouse drying solution. Not only to provide a sanitary environment, but the solution also aims to dry fish under different circumstances, as it rains a lot during the rainy season. In this case, an active heating system seems inevitable. However, an improperly designed system might create a huge burden on the environment and people. Therefore, Project DagUp is born to provide help!
Project DagUp aims to assess the impact of the heating system and the benefits of other preservation methods in order to provide a sustainable and suitable solution for dagaa fishery. Then, the second half of the project will be conducted in Tanzania for function and user testing. Finally, the goal is to have a sustainable and durable pre-production prototype as the outcome of this project.
