Birmingham-Southern senior Diane Kabanyana’s work on an agricultural sustainability project has received international praise.

Kabanyana and four other undergraduate students are members of Plant Space, one of 11 teams that has advanced to the third phase of Wege Prize 2021. The international design competition encourages teams to rethink and redesign the way we produce and consume.

Over nine months of planning, research, and design, student teams choose a “wicked problem” – an issue that is “considerable resistant to resolution” – and propose a solution. The projects can tackle a problem related to products, services, businesses, or non-profits and should aim to develop a circular economy, which is restorative and sustainable.

Plant Space is designing a solar-powered hydroponic system to increase the supply of fresh, high quality produce in Rwandan communities. Kabanyana, a business administration and economics major from Kigali, Rwanda, has worked with her teammates on the idea since August 2020.

“This concept is effective for sanitation, product quality, and space saving, since more crops can be grown vertically through this process,” Kabanyana says. “Rwandans, particularly those living in the city, will have more access and large harvest of fresh fruits and vegetables that do not rely on climate change.”

She first heard about the competition from a friend who participated in the 2018 Wege Prize competition. Kabanyana began researching the criteria and reached out to former high school classmates who were interested in a unified mission – to create a project that would improve the lives of Rwandans.

The other members of Plant Space represent the Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture, Ashesi University in Ghana, and United Arab Emirates University. Kabanyana says judges’ feedback and the structure of the competition has challenged the team and helped them learn even more.

“Since our project requires advanced science and technology that we all lack, we have had and are still looking for more expertise to help make the system less costly and more effective,” she says. “It has been a great experience talking to other people who have a greater understanding of what we are doing and studying topics that I barely know about.”

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The Plant Space team brings backgrounds in business, economics, agricultural studies, and engineering to the project, all of which play important roles in making their system cost effective, well run, and beneficial to fruit and vegetable quality.

For Kabanyana, the project is more than just competition – she’s investing in her dream career path. After graduating in May, she hopes to enter the business world and help promote sustainable agriculture projects in Rwanda and throughout Africa.

“In the light of my background, where the economy is based on the agriculture sector, and while food security is a pressing concern, I have been driven to address food insecurity,” Kabanyana says. “Working on this project has provided me with opportunities for research and has broadened my horizon in my longed-for career. I’m appreciative of my BSC education for inspiring me to think outside of the box and motivating me to work on life-changing issues.”