Juan Carlo Intriago Zambrano

Delft University of Technology | TU · Department of Water management

The platform economy largely focuses on consumer platforms such as Uber and Airbnb, whereas business-to-business platforms receive less attention. This article2 discusses Apollo Agriculture, a Kenyan-Dutch agro-tech platform that aims to support small farmers (‘smallholders’) in rural Africa to set up commercial business through a bundled input loa...

Despite extensive research on farmers' constraints and decisions, technology developers, policymakers and development organizations still encounter difficulties in relating policies to farmers' strategies. Often, the concept of ‘smallholders' is applied as explaining and predicting farmers' decisions—suggesting that specific strategies of farmers c...

Improved water management is an important strategy to support smallholder farming, and thus to foster food security and improved livelihoods. Within this strategy, technologies like water pumps, especially those operating on renewable energies, are key, as they are more environmentally sound and affordable alternatives. Their successful and sustain...

Urinary schistosomiasis is a waterborne parasitic infection caused by Schistosoma haematobium that affects approximately 30 million people annually in Nigeria. Treatment and eradication of this infection require effective diagnostics. However, current diagnostic tests have critical shortcomings and consequently are of limited value to stakeholders...

Pumped irrigation is a way to intensify smallholder production. In this context, the Dutch company aQysta has developed the Barsha pump (BP), the first-ever commercial version of the spiral pumps. BPs, however, face several constraints that affect the decision-making and access of smallholders to this and other agricultural technologies, thus to th...

Pumped irrigation is a way to improve water control for smallholder farming, hence to intensify its production. In this context, the Dutch company aQysta has developed the Barsha pump (BP), the first-ever commercial version of a hydro-powered pump traditionally referred to as spiral pump. BPs, however, have to deal with several constraints that aff...

Water pumping systems driven by renewable energies are more environmentally sound and, at times, less expensive alternatives to electric- or diesel-based ones. From these, hydro-powered pumps have further advantages. Nevertheless, these seem to be largely ignored nowadays. More than 800 scientific and nonscientific documents contributed to assemble...

Global food production needs to increase. Such an increase can come from intensified irrigated agriculture. Many current irrigation technologies are energy-and cost-intensive. Providing irrigation services instead of selling hardware addresses the (financial) reality of smallholder farmers and builds a sustainable business model rather than relying...