Patrick Atanga Avoa, a 32-year-old trainee under the Nation Builders Corp (NABCO) has resorted to making incubators from his house in Yikene, a suburb of Bolgatanga in the Upper East Region. Young Avoa, started working to perfect the manufacturing of incubators after graduating as a mechanical engineer majoring in production from the Kumasi Technical University in 2017.
He conceived the idea of building incubators while at school and subsequently, convinced members of his group to build one as part of their final year project.
What was initially meant to be used for marks met some resistance from their supervisor who had opposed the decision following the inability of several other students to successfully build an incubator as their project in previous years.
The commitment of Patrick Avoa and his team saw them successfully build an incubator which they defended.
Patrick who completed Bawku Technical Institute had to resort to using his secondary school chop box for his works. He also used boxes usually containing brand new unfitted motorbikes at a point for his initial work and has since perfected his craft.
He currently has, in his house, an over thousand capacity incubator which he uses for his personal hatchery. On an average, he uses two days to make an over 200 capacity incubator and three of such incubators in a week if all materials are available.
His decision to join NABCO under the Educate Ghana module was to partly help him raise funds to build and further improve his designs from the savings but the erratic nature of the payment of their allowance has not helped matters.
Patrick Avoa, said he had attempted to build a solar drier for women into Shea processing but was compelled to put that on hold as result of the huge cost involved. His hope is to setup a workshop where he can train many others on the manufacturing of incubators and other items in the region.
Worried about the rising teenage pregnancy and the joblessness among the youth especially girls, Patrick’s desire is to engage many girls in future to empower them to be self-sufficient.
He is therefore, yearning for support to be able to expand and develop other simple machines and devices.
“With this particular type of work, the only assistance someone will need to expand is capital. So, I will prefer financial support to be able to do it well. Look, I’m working in the house and my workshop is under a tree which is not too conducive but I have to manage with the situation. It is better than just sitting. I will need a proper workshop if we will do more than just incubators. We even planned to build a solar powered drier for Shea butter processing but it is very expressive so we had to abandon that for now”.
