Teenage sisters invent AI-powered mat to tackle post-harvest losses

Two teenage sisters, 11-year-old, Zainab and 13-year-old Asmau Nasirudeen Yakubu, have invented an AI-powered mat and Guard Grains to help farmers prevent post-harvest losses and improve crop storage in Nigeria. According to recent statistics, Nigeria lost an estimated 30 to 40 million metric tonnes of food to post-harvest inefficiencies across major value chains—particularly tomatoes, vegetables, […]

Two teenage sisters, 11-year-old, Zainab and 13-year-old Asmau Nasirudeen Yakubu, have invented an AI-powered mat and Guard Grains to help farmers prevent post-harvest losses and improve crop storage in Nigeria.

According to recent statistics, Nigeria lost an estimated 30 to 40 million metric tonnes of food to post-harvest inefficiencies across major value chains—particularly tomatoes, vegetables, fruits, dairy, meat, fish, and root crops—in 2025.

The estimated 30–40 million metric tonnes of post-harvest food losses translate, in monetary terms, to approximately N3.5 trillion to N5 trillion in economic losses.

While the persistence of post-harvest losses reduces farmers’ profits, Zainab Nasirudeen Yakubu’s AI-powered mat, Guard Grains, is targeted at helping farmers scale beyond survival into sustainability.

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The invention—an agricultural solution—gained global recognition over the weekend, earning her the Youngest Founder of the Year award from Tech Unite Africa at the Technology Innovation Recognition Award (TIRA) 2026.

Yakubu, who is co-founder of Guard Grains—a fast-rising $1 million startup transforming farming with technology—underscored the importance of the invention in her acceptance speech.

“I’m honoured to receive this award. Thank you, Tech Unite Africa,” she said.

She described the feat as a testament to the rewards of tenacity amid limiting beliefs.

“This proves one thing: being young is not a limitation. To every young person: start now. Don’t wait. We are not next — we are now.

“A powerful reminder that innovation has no age limit — the future is already here,” she said.

In an interview, their father, Nurudeen Yakubu, described the invention as an AI-powered grain protection system that helps farmers reduce post-harvest losses and protect stored crops.

He added that it provides solutions to reduce pest and rodent damage by making use of sound-repellent technology to keep away rats, lizards, and related animals.

He stressed that the invention helps detect moisture early to prevent grain rot, which aids the preservation of nutrients in agricultural produce.

“70% of what we eat today in the world is artificially dried because people are rushing to bring it from the farm, dry it with machines, and then buy it and sell it and by doing so, it’s killing the nutrients that are in the seeds.

“So in the world, nobody has done such a thing,” he said.

The elated father explained that the award from Tech Unite Africa serves as an inroad for his daughter to compete at the Startup World Cup, where the eventual winner will travel to San Francisco to showcase the product to investors.

“If you emerge, there is big money that people can invest to put so that you can go on with your company,” he said.

He however said access to finance has been a major challenge for the sisters to make into reality their invention.

He said despite the backing of the Vice President of Nigeria, Kashim Shettima, efforts to get the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) and National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI) have not yielded results.

“The challenge in Nigeria is funding. Now, NITDA AND THE Ministry of Agriculture have to come into this as well as NASENI. We have approached all these people. I was the one talking to the NITDA directly to see how we can go about it but we got nothing,” he said.

He said the family is now in talks with the Saudi Arabian government to see what it can do in helping the project.