Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo: a city of 13 million inhabitants where the poorest segments of the population cannot afford a complete diet and suffer from severe malnutrition. As early as the 1980s, the Catholic University of the Congo (UCC) established a farm in the village of Mpangala, about 40 km from Kinshasa. It is a multifunctional farm used not only for food production but also for training and research activities by the UCC Faculty of Economics and Development, covering more than 400 hectares. To date, the farm is not connected to the national electricity grid, lacks cold storage facilities and is difficult to access due to the collapse of some of the bridges linking it to the city of Kinshasa.
This is where researchers from Politecnico di Milano intervene through the I-FERME project, which between 2022 and 2024 worked to improve road access infrastructure to Mpangala and support food processing and preservation, enabling full use of the existing farm. The first step was electrifying the farm through the design of power networks based on photovoltaic panels and batteries, followed by the design of road infrastructure (bridges and viaducts) with low cost and environmental impact, maximising the use of local resources, and the design and construction of smart cold storage facilities for food preservation.
The final result is the availability of affordable products, including for the poorest urban populations, thanks to more efficient food production, improved preservation tools and enhanced distribution capacity in nearby cities, foremost among them Kinshasa.
With a view to prototyping and extending solutions to similar contexts, the researchers developed simplified tools such as open-access software, reference charts and tables, which are accessible and easy to use and will also allow students at the partner university, the Catholic University of the Congo, and local communities to acquire specific basic knowledge that can be applied and transferred to other contexts.
Like other Politecnico research projects funded through 5 per thousand donations, I-FERME aims to develop solutions that can be implemented in the short term, designed to be replicable and to generate long-term effects; case studies that put into practice technologies developed in larger projects and provide students and researchers with the opportunity to apply what they have learned.
The I-FERME project is developed by the Department of Energy in collaboration with the DMEC, DICA and DEIB departments of Politecnico di Milano and the Catholic University of the Congo.
