It looks like a contraption out of a science fiction movie, with its heavy-duty hammer and chains, and it is used for destruction — of the best kind. This machine destroys landmines and is saving lives and limbs in six countries including Angola and Cambodia.
The revolutionary piece of equipment was invented as the result of a chance encounter when Kiyoshi Amemiya, president of Yamanashi Hitachi Construction Machinery, visited Cambodia in 1994 to sell second-hand construction machinery.
He encountered a little girl who was orphaned and an old woman who lost a leg in a landmine explosion. ”They were the only survivors of their family, most of whom were lost to the civil war which ended in 1991. They asked me to help them resolve the landmine problem,” he says.
Once he started doing some research Amemiya learned that there are 110-million buried landmines worldwide and these weapons come cheap to warring factions, at just US$3 each. In Angola, one third of the country is unsafe because of forgotten landmines left behind after the civil war. He also discovered that children tend to become victims of landmines because they mistake the colourful devices for toys, and cannot read the labels which shout: ”danger”.
”As an engineer, I thought I could help them,” he said. He modified Hitachi excavators so they were strong enough to withstand a landmine blast — which typically produces 1000 degrees centigrade of heat — and could cut into rock.
He gathered a team of six engineers in his small company, a Hitachi affiliate, and four years later they came up with a rotary cutter demining attachment which smashes landmines. ”The difficult part was the Japanese government did not allow us to use explosives to test the machine. We had to visit the ministries of industry and defence, and foreign affairs, to convince them to allow us to use explosives. They eventually allowed us to use a field used by the defence force.” They took machines to Cambodia and Afghanistan for testing in real life situations, where they performed well.
Building on this success, two years later they completed the world’s first remote-controlled landmine removal machine and have been improving on it ever since. The latest model has chain hammers that rotate at high speed and dig 20cm into the ground, destroying even large anti-tank landmines, at a rate of 1 000 square metres an hour.
When it is done destroying landmines, the machine turns the land in its wake into productive farm- land. Its rear rake attachment, which resembles huge garden forks, removes mine debris and ploughs down to a depth of 40cm, preparing the land for the planting of rice and vegetables. ”The important thing is not just to remove mines but to make the land inhabitable,” says Amemiya. ”Without removing landmines, you cannot invest in farming and building schools. The world may be interested in countries like Angola, rich in mineral resources, but landmines are an obstacle to their future.”
The company’s goal is to help these communities become self-reliant, as is a Nicaraguan village, where landmines were cleared to make way for an orchard.
Amemiya says removal of landmines by hand is highly risky and it would take 1 000 years to clear all the mines on the planet, while doing it by machine will take just 100 years.
Fifty-six units — funded by the United Nations and the Japanese government — are currently at work in Vietman, Angola, Thailand, Cambodia, Nicaragua and Afghanistan. Angola received two of the machines — which cost $10-million each — and is due to get 10 more next year.
The invention was not without its costs: Amemiya lost the hearing in his right ear and permanently damaged his leg in a controlled landmine explosion. But he says, ”I can still hear the laughter of children in Cambodia and the happy voices of farmers in Nicaragua who are harvesting their crops.”
Malawian jam for sale in Japan
Japan is using lessons it learned nearly two decades ago from its ”one-village-one-product” campaign to help boost the economies of African villages.
In 1979, Morihiko Hiramatsu the former governor of Oita Prefecture, required villages to specialise in a product or industry, and to market it nationally, or even globally. The government did not offer any subsidies fearing these would hamper self-reliance, but it did assist in product development and distribution.
Now these lessons are being applied in Malawi and Ghana, where the Japan International Cooperation Agency (Jica) assists villagers with training and technical expertise in packaging, pricing, advertising and exports.
Tomohiko Taniguchi, from Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, says the ”bottom-top project” encourages villages to produce specific regional products that boost tourism. ”Japan won’t provide financial assistance, but technical expertise,” says Taniguchi. ”It will also play the role of matchmaker to find institutions that could provide micro loans.”
At last week’s African Fair 2008 — a side event to the fourth Tokyo International Conference on African development held in Yokohama — Malawi showcased Kaporo palm oil, baobab jam and honey candles. Kiyo Matsushima, the Jica expert in Malawi, says the project launched three years ago and 46 communities now produce 24 products.
Previously, villagers used to sell the baobab seed, but now they produce baobab jam, which is sold in Japan, with Jica providing assistance in training, packaging, marketing and minimal equipment.
Japanese cosmetics company Tree of Life which imports shea butter from Ghana for its products, was asked by the Japanese External Trade Organisation to train women in Sagnarigu, northern Ghana. The women who make shea butter soap have produced 30 000 units of soap for sale in Japan.
Project co-ordinator Adisa Yakubu said ”the ladies were taught how to weigh and price the shea butter. People don’t know how to price their products.” Income has been trickling in and they are using it to send their children to university. ”One lady who had no teeth, even managed to fix her dentures,” Yakubu said.
At the conference Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda pledged to double Japan’s annual net official development assistance to Africa to $1,8-billion by 2012 and to extend up to $4-billion in new loans for infrastructure, including road projects. He said Japan will soon be sending a mission to Africa to investigate business opportunities.
His pledge was greeted with some scepticism by African journalists, who argued that Japan’s investment in Africa is a late scramble for the continent, after India and China. But Fukuda argued that Japan has been giving aid to Africa since 1993, after the end of the cold war when other countries’ interest in Africa was declining. ”We are fully aware of the importance of partnerships. Japan was able to recover from the war thanks to aid from other countries. Africa is important to Japan politically and economically.”
Primarashni Gower attended the Fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development as a guest of the Japanese government