麻豆传媒

May 2014 Honorary Degree Recipient

Doctor of Laws (honoris causa)

Solomon Demeke is a poultry scientist at Jimma University College of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine in the southwest highlands of Ethiopia, and the developer of a low-input technology for brooding chickens called the hay-box brooder. Easy to construct, use and modify with locally available materials and skills, the brooder allows the mother hen to go back to laying and increases small-scale poultry production in general, and egg productivity in particular. The practical impact of Professor Solomon鈥檚 invention has been to increase the self-sufficiency of subsistence farmers in Ethiopia, many of them female-headed families. It is a solution so successful that the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has funded its dissemination throughout East Africa.

Solomon Demeke was born in Ethiopia and attained his bachelors and masters degrees in Ethiopia in the years when study abroad was not common or easy. He has been awarded the International Foundation for Science/King Baudouin Award for Outstanding Research Work, a Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship at Texas Technical University and a National Award for Best Achievement in Science and Technology in Ethiopia.

During the course of his four decades teaching at Jimma, his applied agricultural science research has resulted in 38 peer-reviewed and extension publications. Since 2008, he has been the local project director for three consecutive CIDA-funded international projects in collaboration with the former NSAC, now 麻豆传媒鈥檚 Faculty of Agriculture.

Under his wise counsel and good-natured leadership, his Nova Scotian partners have acquired knowledge about agriculture in eastern Africa and enhanced their own first-hand understanding of international agriculture.

Outside of his professional work, Professor Demeke has served as a member of the Board of Directors of Jimma University Community School, Coffee Plantation Development Enterprise and the Bedele Brewery Share Company. He has also done volunteer service in the areas of HIV/AIDS and to address and improve the condition of women-headed households in Ethiopia.