Associate Professor of Agricultural Machinery Engineering at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST).
Growing up in a rural setting in the Volta Region of Ghana and practicing the traditional methods of farming, education and time revealed the inventor abilities of Professor Emmanuel Bobobee.
Professor Bobobee trains various students to master the fields of agriculture, theoretically and practically at KNUST. The minisett yam planter, the motorized groundnut cracker-winnower, abrasive wear testing equipment and double-row disc ridger are some innovations he led with his students.
Prof. Bobobee was a student of the Sogakope Senior High School and Mawuli School, where he obtained his O level and A level certificates, respectively. He obtained his BSc (Hons) Engineering degree at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST). He holds a Master of Science degree in Agricultural Machinery Engineering (UK), and a PhD in Agricultural Engineering (Sweden).
He’s been teaching in the university since 1988 not only in Ghana but in countries like Namibia and Sweden. He was a specialist researcher Agricultural Mechanization at the Institute of Agricultural Engineering Research of the Agricultural Research Council of South Africa.
He has also authored and co-authored over 50 scientific and technical publications in agricultural engineering, equipment development and related disciplines. Professor Bobobee is the inventor of the Tek Mechanical Cassava Harvester, the Tek Groundnut Cracker Winnower, table-top rice threshing equipment, table-top forage chopper, abrasive wear testing equipment, and wear resistant plough shares suitable for all soil engaging implements. Other equipment such as motorized vertical cassava peeler (still being modified) and the horizontal cassava peeler, motorized cassava slicers and centrifuge for cassava extraction are still under development and testing.
The patented Tek Mechanical Cassava Harvester is among the first of its kind developed on commercial basis in Africa. It is robust, durable and light in weight. It has been engineered to address the difficulty in large scale harvesting of root and tuber crops like cassava, yam, sweet potato and cocoyam. It weighs 300 kg and is one meter wide with a slatted conical mould-board. It can harvest a hectare within a maximum of two hours. This is a solution Professor Bobobee has offered to lessen the pain in agriculture and this invention will popularize his name farther in the world.
The development of the cassava harvester innovation has led him to receive the first Engineering excellence awards in 2014 from the Ghana Institution of Engineers, and a third price in a pitch presentation at the Royal Academy of Engineering in London in 2015. He was also shortlisted among 12 finalists on the continent by the Royal Academy of Engineering in UK for the Africa Prize in Engineering Innovation in 2016.
This innovation is being used in Ghana and is in demand in New Zealand, Fiji Island in the deep Atlantic oceans, Jamaica, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe, Angola, Malawi and South Africa. He believes that if government should support not only his works but innovations like this, other inventors will be encouraged to bring out new devices that will eventually create jobs for the youth and revenue for the country. Innovation is his hobby, his passion and doing it defines him, his life and what he believes in and the passion sprang forth from his humble beginning and his determination to turn things around for good. Having experienced agriculture in the most painful way during his youth, he wanted to lessen the pain of other agriculturists. His grandmother trained him in farming using the traditional methods such as the hoe, cutlass and the other tools used for manual farming. When he went to school, he saw it as an escape point from all these painful manual jobs.
Whiles in Mawuli School, the love for the name “Agricultural Engineering” made him want to venture into it. Immediately he realized during his undergraduate days at the university how the course being taught can help alleviate the painful methods of agriculture, he decided to take it seriously to enable him contribute massively to the industry. So, his innovations are actually in response to how he suffered practicing the manual methods of agriculture
. Professor Bobobee believes that the engineer is the professional, who is continuing creation that God has started and part of the agricultural engineer’s work is to remove pain and drudgery in agriculture to make agricultural production attractive to the youth, sustainable and user-friendly. He jovially believes since agriculture is a curse from God (Gen 3: 17-19), that is, when God cursed Adam and Eve in the bible to toil before they can feed. It is incumbent on the agriculturist thereof to lessen the pain of that curse, thus. He believes agriculture can be made high tech and attractive to the youth to take it as a lucrative business. Aside the business of invention, Professor Bobobee is a man of many parts and a politician of conviction. He ran as a Member of Parliament in 1992, 2008 and Vice-Presidential running mate of the Convention People’s Party (CPP) in 2020. He believes there is a way to use politics to support his passion, to make life comfortable for all.
His inventions have shone a light on Africa especially Ghana He was able to battle his humble beginning and emerged victorious, he didn’t run away from it but he looked upon it as an obstacle that must be the way, modernized it not only for himself but for the youth as well.
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