How it began
Bart Weetjens, a Belgian product developer, began exploring the use of giant African pouched rats as mine detection animals in 1997, and launched the APOPO project with Christophe Cox that November. After consulting rodent experts at the University of Antwerp and Sokoine University of Agriculture, the team chose the African giant pouched rat. In 2000, under an agreement with the university and the Tanzanian People's Defence Forces, APOPO set up its headquarters and training facilities on the campus in Morogoro, Tanzania, where the training method was developed.
Before it existed
Dogs had been used for about 20 years to find landmines and other explosive remnants of war. Weetjens wanted a local solution for Africa, where landmines caused casualties in 32 of 53 countries between 1998 and 2008. Pouched rats are native to sub-Saharan Africa and resistant to local diseases, are too light to set off mines, are cheap to keep and can live up to eight years in captivity.
How it works
Training starts at about six weeks of age. A click is paired with food so that it becomes a reward signal. In a cage with holes in the floor the rat learns to pause over a sample that smells of TNT. It then works on soil platforms with buried TNT containers and finally on a 70-acre training minefield holding 1,533 defused mines planted by the Tanzanian military. In the field the rat wears a harness and moves along a rope between two handlers, scratching the ground where it smells a mine. Rats must pass a blind test before use.
How it spread
The first field trial took place in Mozambique in 2003, where the rats indicated all 20 mines later found by manual deminers. In 2009 a team of 34 rats cleared 199,318 square meters in Gaza Province, Mozambique, finding 75 landmines. A tuberculosis detection program began in Tanzania in 2007, with rats screening sputum samples from clinics. Operations later extended to Angola, Cambodia, Ethiopia and other countries.
Where it stands today
APOPO reported in 2023 that over 25 years its programs had cleared more than 87 million square meters of land, destroyed over 155,000 explosive devices and identified more than 27,000 additional tuberculosis cases. A rat can search an area the size of a tennis court in 30 minutes. The organization employs more than 400 people and keeps its operational headquarters at Sokoine University of Agriculture.
