Thursday, December 16, 2021

The short story of Injera making at industrial scale.

This video clip reminds of me the story of the Ethiopian Environmental Engineer in U.S. who invented similar machine for industrial scale production of Injera 2 decades ago and and wanted to make it operational in Ethiopia. You can read some more details of the story in Harry  Kloman's book 'Mesob in America' or in my forthcoming article tentatively titled 'Ethiopian Food & Drinks in North America:  Culinary & migration history'. The details may not be as accurate as i would like them to be but I will try to summarize and provide the general contour of the story.  

In addition to achieving more production with much less energy use, the Engineer had hoped that his machine replacing the traditional way of making Injera will contribute immensely for reduction of the health hazard Injera-gagaris (bakers) are exposed to by inhaling smoke from coal or woods as well as reduction of the environmental hazard by protecting the forests which were cut for use in injera making. He wanted to these women to be employed in injera making factories instead. 

Well you may ask what happened to that plan or how come it was not operational?

Yes, you guessed it right, after many years since the original application and too much bureaucracy TPLF/MLLT demanded that the blueprint and patent info has to be shared with their EFFORT endowed enterprise (I believe Mesfin Engineering). I was told the Engineer refused and that became the end of it.

https://fb.watch/9XQUkH29Jf/