Akasha Epi Centre is about bringing knowledge, learner-ship and appropriate technologies to the farmers of the old Transkei region; we introduce farmers to the Participatory Guarantee System, organic farming methods and practices. Lower Jotela has been ignored by municipality and other rural development initiatives - we have chosen to change this, starting with the children and smallholder farmers
in the village. We have developed a rural development model that is based on the local common denominator in Africa, the village family that has land, and a need for appropriate technologies that will allow them to process crops and other raw material, into bio-fertilizer, food and biofuel. The design is locally centred supply chain development for goods and services, that fulfill the needs of the impoverished rural communities; our rationale is to integrate farmers into supply chains for food, fuel and agricultural inputs. We provide the appropriate technologies that are modular, replicable, and scalable - the product range is food, bioethanol gel, biodiesel and bioethanol Gel. The structural design of the project rests on the development of an Epi Centre, where training and mentorship in all categories of the agronomy, processing and small business development. The Epi Centre is central to and serves the Agri Hub, which is a collection of Sustainable Micro Agri Processing (SMAP) units, situated at the village.
