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Items by Erik Hersman
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16:36
From: AfriGadget
Read This Entry & More At AfriGadget
A couple weeks ago one of our inspirations for AfriGadget - Emeka Okafor of Timbuktu Chronicles - put forward an idea on the Ned forums about a “Maker Faire Africa“.
The aim of a Maker Faire-like event is to create a space on the continent where Afrigadget-type innovations, inventions and initiatives can be sought, identified, brought to life, supported, amplified, propagated, etc. Maker Faire Africa asks the question, “What happens when you put the drivers of ingenious concepts from Mali with those from Ghana and Kenya, and add resources to the mix?”
The focus here is not on high-tech, but on manufacturing. Specifically, fabrication, the type of small and unorganized businesses that pop up wherever an entrepreneur is found on the African continent. It gets exciting when you think about gathering some of the real innovators from this sector into one place where they can learn from each other and spread their knowledge from one part of the continent to another.
  
A few fabrication stories on AfriGadget:
The organizing team will collaborate with the organizers of the International Development Design Summit (IDDS), which will be held at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in mid/late Summer 2009, to ensure a well-timed, visible, and celebratory event that draws upon IDDS outcomes and attracts new participants. The aim of Maker Faire Africa 2009 will be to establish partnerships and an organizing infrastructure that could lead to a series of events across the continent.
Needless to say, AfriGadget is 100% behind this initiative and will take an active role in both promotion and organizing, as needed.
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0:51
From: AfriGadget
Read This Entry & More At AfriGadget
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Rendille Home - Made of USAID Food Bags, originally uploaded by whiteafrican.
From the AfriGadget Flickr Archives. A traditional Rendille home in the deserts of Northern Kenya reuses USAID bags to make their structure.
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9:44
From: AfriGadget
Read This Entry & More At AfriGadget
“I feel good when I do these things.”
One of my favorite stories on AfriGadget has been of Philip Isohe and his hobby of making very detailed (and working) model airplanes and buses made from scratch. Earlier this year, the ArtBots Show contacted me to get Philip to create one for them that they could show at their annual show in Dublin, Ireland that is happening this weekend. The airplane will be given away as a prize at the show.
They also asked me to create a video of Philip to use at the show:
Philip with the final airplane, painted and working:
The original story of Philip, done last summer.
More images on Zoopy and our Flickr group.
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14:29
From: AfriGadget
Read This Entry & More At AfriGadget
Ruud Elmendorp, a video journalist living in East Africa, has done a more in depth interview with the young Morris Mbetsa who we recently talked about with his mobile phone-based car security system.
“You don’t need a computer, you don’t need a monthly subscription fee, you just need your mobile phone.”
He’s now looking to start a company that manufactures and installs these systems in Kenya.
[Blog link | Video link]
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12:04
From: AfriGadget
Read This Entry & More At AfriGadget
A couple weeks ago, on a trip to Cambridge (US), Clark Boyd of The World sat down with me to do a quick interview and to grab some pictures from my most recent trip to Kenya for a slideshow. Here are the results (you can definitely tell a pro is behind this production):
[Direct slideshow link - higher quality]
Courtesy of Clark Boyd, Technology Correspondent for The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH Boston. For Clark’s weekly technology podcast, visit www.theworld.org/technology.
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12:16
From: AfriGadget
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In downtown Bamako, Mali an entrepreneurial bookshop owner, Mamadou Coulibaly, has been attracting an ever-increasing number of clients and curious onlookers since the owner set up an odd-looking computer. “The Source” is a handmade computer box that acts as an offline distributor of online multimedia material. Anyone can step up to the kiosk and pick up anything from Wikipedia pages to local music. Their most popular requests: the Koran and Malian music.
[video link]
“Our goal is to give people a wider access to educational and cultural material, so this can help to trigger their desire to learn and expand their knowledge.”
This type of innovation really brings home the slow, or expensive, capacity of local internet connections. Bypassing internet cafes (slow) for local, or more static content, can be done through local-only internet hosting too. However, what’s ingenious here is the idea that most people in Bamako don’t need the internet connection at all. That by acting as a simple distribution node for dynamic information and media (the web) they are successfully filling the needs of the local population.
It’s always good to see local-level entrepreneurs benefiting from taking outside ideas and making them work for their needs in Africa. Many times a completely new solution isn’t needed, just a culturally relevant one.
[More on "The Source"]
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7:24
From: AfriGadget
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Joining the AfriGadget community with Zoopy’s video community
Over the past two years AfriGadget videos have been hosted haphazardly by our team on YouTube and Brightcove. We’re very happy to announce that we’re partnering with one of Africa’s premier video and image hosting sites, Zoopy, for all of our videos from now on. We’re all about promoting African entrepreneurs, and this is no exception.
Jason, and the team at Zoopy, has created a customized channel for us, that can be found at Zoopy.com/AfriGadget. They’ve been brilliant, responsive and patient all through the setup process.
 AfriGadget videos can now be found on Zoopy.com
Look for a few more videos going up on Zoopy than we used to put up elsewhere, some of them the outtakes that are just sitting in the archive. We’re not video pros, as most of you know by now, but it sure is great to hear these innovators tell their own story in their own words.
Here’s an example from a story on a lady and her daughter who make custom fishing flies:
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5:07
From: AfriGadget
Read This Entry & More At AfriGadget
Not all inventiveness is utilitarian (or, business can be fun and fun can mean more business…).
Such is the case with this video by Eric Kabera – the maker of the genocide film “100 days” and inventor of Hillywood - Rwanda’s version of Hollywood. In it he interviews Alphonse Maniriho, an unschooled young 23 year old with an idea: take the classic “Black Mamba” bicycle and completely customize it.
Being a smart young businessman, Alphonse uses his unique bicycle to his advantage, getting extra business from young men who want to ride with him so they can listen to the beats along the way.
A quick list of customizations:
- A watch, set in an old shoe polish can
- Lights, that flicker in the front and back at night
- Radio, for his passengers to listen to
A little background on what being a taxi man is in East and Central Africa is probably important for most who haven’t been to Africa. They have a seat on the back of the bicycle and use that to take passengers around. In East Africa they also go by the term “boda boda” (because they originated around the border of Uganda and Kenya).
Bonus: at about the 8:30 minute mark there are some nice videos of the wooden bikes used around Africa.
[Hat tip: a special thanks to Paula Kahumbu of Wildlife Direct for pointing me towards this story.]
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1:37
From: AfriGadget
Read This Entry & More At AfriGadget
I’ve written about handmade tools in Africa before, but it didn’t generate a ton of interest, so I’ve not followed-up on it very much in my travels. I was really happy to see that another person was intrigued by this though, Kevin Kelly has a post where Tom Ritchey, master bike frame builder, sent him pictures of hand-made tools he spotted at bike shops in Rwanda.
Fabrication is an important skill in developing nations. Along the whole process you see reuse taking place, even down to the tools being used to create the items in question.
A Kenyan micro-entrepreneur recently told me:
In the sixties, during the space race between Russia and the U.S.A the Russian Engineers, when told there was no more money for the budget philosophically said “now we have no money then we can think” and they were able to be tremendously creative when compared to the Americans despite the limited funds at their disposal. This is the same approach I use in my initiatives.
As I’m not the only one who thinks these are pretty cool, I’m digging into the AfriGadget Flickr Group to pull out a picture that I never published here on the blog. These are small engine repair tools built to work on motorcycles, generators and lawnmowers (among other things):
And finally, a video of Bernard, one of the local small engine repair guys in Nairobi (who’s shop has since disappeared) talking about how he makes some of the tools:
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18:38
From: AfriGadget
Read This Entry & More At AfriGadget
Gikomba is a part of Nairobi that is well known for metal working. I had been meaning to come this way for a while, and today afforded me the perfect opportunity to drop down into Gikomba and see what kind of enterprising activities Kenyans were up to.
I ran into a George Odhiambo, a bulk fabricator of everything from wheelbarrows to chisels. The chisels caught my eye, primarily because one of them looked a lot like a shaft straight out of a Land Rover. It turns out that they reuse multiple types of iron for their goods, including leftover pieces from old vehicles. Nothing goes to waste here.
Even more interesting to me (probably because it moved and did stuff with fire), was the bicycle-turned-to-bellows that kept the fire going that would heat the metal rods. It’s a fairly simple, yet ingenious contraption that utilizes old materials with a little bit of engineering. The thing runs all day, every day too, so it’s made to last.
The chisel pictured below is a stone chisel, used in quarrying and squaring stones in the quarry’s dotting the country (most houses in Kenya are stone). They cost about 350/= ($6) to make, and sell for about 650/-= ($11).
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12:17
From: AfriGadget
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Makeni is a small town in Sierra Leone. Like the rest of the country, it is trying to recover from years of internal strife. Unlike the rest of the country, they have the Binkolo Growth Centre, a small industrial project near Makeni where the manufacture of small farm implements, tailoring, carpentry and blacksmithing takes place, and includes the use of disabled people. Two VSO volunteers, one from Kenya one from Canada, work to train and bring new ideas to the centre.
One such idea was to create a fuel replacement for their pickup by using local palm nuts, a by-product of the palm kernels, which are generally fed to pigs or used for fertilizer. Since diesel fuel for their truck runs approximately $5/gallon, it wouldn’t hurt to try.
It became clear that in our poor country the chief hurdles were getting the chemicals and the right equipment. The search was on for the chemicals and after quite a treasure hunt and more than a few bribes we managed to find 4 litres of Methanol and 5 kilos of Potassium Hydroxide (enough to make a good bomb I think)…
…Actually the whole scene was quite amusing. Here we were hoping to compete with the big oil producers in the back yard of a small village and using an untried collection of old car parts, old pipes and taps attached to a used chemical container, all put together in an image downloaded from the internet. Nonetheless we were fuelled by much excitement, with much of the local community looking on, wondering what on earth we were up to.
Read the rest of this great story, and see a lot more images, on Paul in Sierra Leone’s Blog!
(hat tip Emeka)
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11:31
From: AfriGadget
Read This Entry & More At AfriGadget
This last week I had the opportunity to catch up with one of my favorite bloggers, Jan Chipchase, while we spoke together on a panel at the Global Philanthropy Forum. Jan works for Nokia as what can best be described as a design and usability ethnographer. He explores the way mobile phones are used worldwide and reports that back to Nokia’s design team. He’s a fascinating person to talk to, and I thought I might highlight some of the stories he’s come up with while exploring in Africa.
 One of the consistent themes of Jan’s message is that it in each country he visits there is a booming market of hackers and mobile phone mechanics who are doing all kinds of interesting things. They are taking the designs of the West and applying them to their lives, modifying them and making them work for their local needs. From Accra to Nairobi, there is always a “cell phone alley” for you to buy, repair or customize your mobile phone.
In a post titled, “Recycled, Upcycled: Remade” he tackles the question of whether it is possible to create a phone completely of recycled parts.
Of all the internal concepts I’ve followed this year this is one I keep returning to, not least because sustainability is a pressing issue in a billion+ products-per-year industry - but also because the team tackled a number of related weighty issues in what was a far reaching project. I hope that in due course more of their design thinking makes it into the public domain, not least to stimulate critical feedback from people like your good selves.
One of the more interesting innovations is the development of a dual SIM card hack so that users can access multiple carriers.
This product has two SIM card slots in a single phone - primarily to support price sensitive/prudent consumers who wish to optimise their call costs by maintaining SIM cards from two different phone operators. As in many countries - calls to a customer using a different Ghanaian operator cost slightly more than those on the same network.
There are many more examples of mobile phone use in Africa and the ingenious solutions that locals come up with for their particular situations on Jan’s blog. The last image that I want to show is of the Village Phone project (by Grameen Bank) happening in Uganda. Jan has taken an excellent picture and annotated it with the important facts about this project in a rural Uganda.
For more information about Jan, read this recent NY Times article about him, and of course subscribe to his blog, Future Perfect.
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20:40
From: AfriGadget
Read This Entry & More At AfriGadget
The Universal Nut Sheller (UNS) is part of the Full Belly Project. It’s really an amazing story about a device that has had a direct impact on a number of African countries. The story goes that Jock Brandis, an American inventor, was on a trip to Mali and saw some women who had been shelling peanuts leaving them with bleeding hands. This spurred him on to create a device that would help end hunger.
(Watch a video of a pedal-powered one in action)
How does it work?
The process works by centrifugal force and friction. The Universal Nut Sheller is basically a concrete cone within a cone, open at the top and bottom, with the interior cone being solid. The interior cone, or rotor, rotates on a shaft and has an attached handle (Note: only one moving part!). The user turns the handle around fast enough to spin the nuts to the outside through centrifugal force. The nuts fall between the surfaces and are rolled and squeezed, allowing the nuts and shells to fall through to the bottom. This mix of nuts and shells is then winnowed out, the old fashioned way.
Reach and Impact
According to the Full Belly Project, this machine is being used in 12 African nations, including; Mali, Uganda, Malawi, DRC, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leon, Sudan and Zambia.
The nut sheller is being used to shell more than just peanuts. As new villages take up the device, they turn it towards their own diverse nut shelling needs, such as jatropha, neem nuts, shea nuts or coffee.
Most importantly, he Universal Nut Sheller costs about $50-75 dollars to make, depending on the price of local materials, and will serve the needs of a village of 200 to 1000 people.
Like two past projects that we’ve highlighted on AfriGadget, this one is encouraging. Both the recently profiled see-saw power machine (possibly), and the KickStart pumps are based on the belief that sustainable economic growth comes through empowering local entrepreneurs to start, or extend, their businesses. In fact, the plans for the UNS are free and downloadable.
(Via Kaushal)
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9:37
From: AfriGadget
Read This Entry & More At AfriGadget
 The BBC is running a story on a young inventor, 23-year old Daniel Sheridan, who has designed a teeter-totter (see-saw) that can be used to power school classrooms in Africa. His ultimate goal is to see a whole playground of energy-creating equipment.
“The current need for electricity in sub-Saharan Africa is staggering. Without power development is extremely difficult. The potential for this product is huge and the design could be of benefit to numerous communities in Africa and beyond.”
The idea came about after travels to East Africa, where he taught at a school and was inspired by the students. Daniel developed the see-saw power design as part of his final year at Coventry University. He has calculated that five to 10 minutes use on the see-saw could generate enough electricity to light a classroom for an evening.
Some Thoughts
What would be more interesting would be to see this idea built out with local supplies, as Daniel is going to be doing soon in Uganda. Then, with the knowledge learned there, see if it could fall into the same model of micro-entrepreneurial devices that we see with the KickStart water pumps. Speaking of which, this also reminds me of the PlayPumps idea, which also has a lot of potential.
Daniel states, “The unique selling point of this product is that it is not intended as a profit-making design.” I can only hope that he means this as profit for him. Profit making on the ground by Africans of this type of design could be crucial for its long-term success.
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11:59
From: AfriGadget
Read This Entry & More At AfriGadget
AfriGadget’s second monthly BBC/PRI interview with The World is now live. Juliana, one of the editors who also blogs at Afromusing, was interviewed this month. You’ll hear her start talking at about 17:15 in the podcast.
(I took this shot of Juliana while at DEMO, where we did a panel on tech in Africa)
It’s been a lot of fun to start sharing some of the stories and vision behind AfriGadget through the radio. Clark Boyd is a real pro, so it makes it easier for us amateur radio interviewees to figure out what we’re doing. (thanks Clark!)
The World’s tech podcasts are done weekly (Friday), you can find out more on their site and subscribe there. If you’re interested, you can also follow it through Twitter and Facebook.
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19:27
From: AfriGadget
Read This Entry & More At AfriGadget
We’re proud to announce a brand new design for AfriGadget! The old design was rather old and ugly, so thanks for putting up with it for the last 20 months. Actually, I think the reason that there are so many more RSS subscribers to AfriGadget than daily visitors can be attributed to how it looked… 
2 New Things:
You’ll notice two buttons just beneath the header. We’re working on a number of items, two of which we’re ready to unveil.
The AfriGadget Grassroots Reporting Project
We’re intent on getting more AfriGadget contributors from all over Africa. Part of that plan is to find potential editors and set them up with a mobile phone with which to take pictures and do interviews. If you know someone that would make a good fit, let me know.
The AfriGadget Store (phase 1)
The first phase of the store is making some AfriGadget gear (t-shirts and mugs) available to everyone (hint: you can customize any design and select any type of shirt/color to put it on). The next step is to create a full-featured store with some of the items that are made by the entrepreneurs shown on AfriGadget. This would include products, as well as plans.
One of the big goals here is to create a service that doesn’t just publish interesting stories about African micro-entrepreneurs, though we do plan on continuing that, but to also explore ways that we can be a conduit back to those very same people. This redesign already has our future plans for dealing with entrepreneurs built into it. Part of that is the future phases of the AfriGadget store, but we’re also looking at ways to partner with others and encourage direct investment into worthy entrepreneurs businesses.
Look for more on that in a future update. Until then, we’re just happy we have some new stuff to show you!
If you find any errors, which I’m sure there will be some, please leave a comment or shoot me an email.
Lastly, a special thanks goes out to Jared for making this site look so good.
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8:31
From: AfriGadget
Read This Entry & More At AfriGadget
Over the weeks since the first post we did on Dr. Cedrick Ngalande’s inexpensive power source for Africa, we’ve been emailing back and forth about his invention. Yesterday, he sent me a link to a video of his device on YouTube.
“The rotor moves slowly most of the times but does pick up at certain intervals. This process continues for many hours. Since the rotor is quite heavy (and hence more inertia) a small geared DC motor can be connected to the rotor to generate power for cell phones, $100 laptops, and other things in Africa. People can leave this thing to charge their phones/$100 laptops overnight.”
(more…)
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10:04
From: AfriGadget
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We’ve written about young Malawian William Kamkwamba a couple of times here on AfriGadget, so it’s great to see him getting recognition in the WSJ! The article is titled “A Young Tinkerer Builds a Windmill, Electrifying a Nation“. Take a look at the video:
(more…)
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14:11
From: AfriGadget
Read This Entry & More At AfriGadget
Victor Kaonga points us to Dr. Cedrick Ngalande, a Malawian, who has built a prototype power source made specifically for Africa. It generates power using sugar and yeast for up to 8 hours at a time.
Mobile phones are big in Africa, however it’s a real challenge to power them. How about night time electrical lighting, rather than paraffin lamps. Of course, in Africa we can think of all types of applications that this device could be used for.
This gadget will be very ideal to developing countries like Africa where electricity is scarce. As you know, the growth of cell phone is fastest in Africa. The problem most Africans have is that they cannot charge those cell phones due to lack of electricity. Some have to walk long distances just to charge cell phones. My invention will make it easy for these people to charge their cell phones. Also, this generator can be used to charge $100 computers which are being introduced in Africa. It can also be used to charge or operate medical devices in rural Africa.
On a side note, I love seeing inventions made by Africans for Africans. It’s only by living and being a part of the everyday life that you get past the surface issues and start to really understand the real problems to be overcome. Personally, I love this story; it’s ingenious and African - just what we like here on AfriGadget!
If you have any stories, pictures or videos of ingenious African solutions, send them to us!
(hat tip: Soyapi)
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12:44
From: AfriGadget
Read This Entry & More At AfriGadget
 There’s a really interesting story about a man in Kenya who claims to have created a plane from scratch.
Using a Volkswagen beetle engine, and aluminium sheets for the body, Mr Gachamba made a single seater plane.
He tested it out at an airstrip in Nyeri and sure enough, it took off. Caught up in the excitement of the minute, he decided to fly to his home in Mathira.
A few minutes into the ride, he noticed the engine was overheating. He decided to turn and in the process the low flying plane struck a tree top and crash landed. He was injured in the leg and has had a limp since.
(Read the rest of the article)
I’d love to see pictures of this plane, though I’m doubtful of there being any as this happened in the 70’s. Either way, a fun story. Right now he’s building his own Hummer from an old Datsun engine and “wheelbarrows, wheelchairs, metal pipes and other vehicle accessories”. At 75 years old he’s not slowing down at all!
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14:22
From: AfriGadget
Read This Entry & More At AfriGadget
One of the things that I find most interesting in my travels around Africa is the similar uses of technology to meet the varied demands of different types of mechanics and workers. The particular case I’ve been thinking over is the use of a simple frame and different engines to meet a specific need.
Many of the same components are used from one machine to the next. The fabricators know that each machine has a different use, but that the parts used to make them unique are not that many.
For instance, below is an image of a painting machine.
The painting machine has an engine, an air compressor and a tank for holding the compressed air.
I’ve seen the same setup, switching out the air compressor for a circular saw, water pump, or a generator. In the same way, the compressed air tank can be switched out for a larger fuel-holding tank or some other machinery that fits the specific need.
Below is an image of the same type of machine, this one with the same setup, except that the compressor is used for tire repair instead of painting.
Generally, the engine and the frame are the mainstay. The engines used are primarily Briggs & Stratton, the old workhorses of Africa, though I’ve seen Honda trying to make headway in this market lately as well.
The machinery setup is a good example of low-cost fabrication using a modular setup. All of the local fabricators tend to use the same frame setup so that they can mix and match with each others work.
More pictures on the AfriGadget Flickr Group.
[Update: I’m currently going through my archive of pictures and videos for more machines like this. If you have some pictures of these types of machines, please send them my way.]
Another example:
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10:37
From: AfriGadget
Read This Entry & More At AfriGadget
This post is dedicated to Blog Action Day, where thousands of blogs around the world unite to talk about one theme. This year it is the environment.
Simon Mwangi calls himself a mabati (sheet metal) blacksmith. He takes junk and creates beautiful metal animal sculptures. If you happen by his roadside shop on Ngong Road in Nairobi, you’ll see a number of crocodiles and if you’re lucky, a full sized giraffe.
If you’re in the market for a crocodile, which he sells primarily to hotels, be ready to pay 30,000 Kenya Shillings (about $450). They take about one week to make.
What’s remarkable about Simon, beyond the actual artwork that he fabricates, is that everything he does and works with is made from left over metal junk. Even the welding machines that his team uses are made by the team from leftover metal plates and copper wire. (See an example of the welder at this earlier AfriGadget post)
This is an excellent example of how Africans reuse and recycle to meet their needs. Many times their ingenuity creates thriving businesses, proving that entrepreneurship and environmental needs aren’t mutually exclusive.
(More images in the AfriGadget Flickr Group)
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7:21
From: AfriGadget
Read This Entry & More At AfriGadget
Most of the stories on AfriGadget are stories of work-based ingenuity. However, every once in a while you get an incredible story about someone who creates an amazing do-it-yourself “fun” item. In this case Wired is reporting about Cyril Mazibuko who creates his own home made paraglider:
Cyril is the only black South African currently registered with the sport’s ruling body. And it all started with a glider he made from plastic bags, purloined rope and baling wire, a glider that flew — sort of — though it both amazed and horrified the professional paragliders who saw it.
Read the full story at Wired
(hat tip Tyrell)
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11:36
From: AfriGadget
Read This Entry & More At AfriGadget
Ken Banks of Kiwanja.net is a mobile expert as it relates to the developing countries. He sends in a picture from his most recent trip to Uganda. 200 Ugandan Shillings per unit is equivalent to about $0.11.
Ken on the BodaPhone:
I met this phone operator off Kampala Road this afternoon, who was riding round on this bike. Luckily he was a fellow Liverpool supporter so we hit it off straight away – and he let me take a photo of his BodaPhone setup. Pretty neat, and with a spare battery to allow him to stay on the road longer. Uganda is really hotting up on the mobile front, with two new operators about to enter the market towards the end of the year.
Ken is quite active in this space and runs the very popular Social Mobile Group, found on both Facebook and on his site. He has also been interviewed in a story today on BBC that talks about the mobiles in Africa.
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20:27
From: AfriGadget
Read This Entry & More At AfriGadget
Simon Kasiraba is one of many sausage vendors found in the cities and small towns throughout East Africa. He’s the prototypical micro-entrepreneur trying to make a living by supplying a need (food - conveniently available). He’s on AfriGadget because of the simple innovative solution that he employs to keep his food ready to be eaten at all times of the day - which is very important when you’re set up beside a bus stop.
He keeps the meat warm using steam, with a simple charcoal heater placed inside the body of the sausage cart. The water goes into the pipe on the side of the cart, and floods a water panel directly underneath the meat. When it gets hot, the steam keeps the sausages warm, yet juicy. The cart cost him 14,000 shillings (about $200). He sells each sausage for 10 shillings (about 0.14 cents).
Here is a video of Simon showing me his sausage heating cart:
Images of the sausage heating carts can be found in the AfriGadget Flickr image pool.
If you have any stories that would fit well on AfriGadget, contact us, we’d love to hear from you!
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19:28
From: AfriGadget
Read This Entry & More At AfriGadget
 First off, I’d like to thank the thousands of readers who visit AfriGadget every week. It’s been great to see the amount of interest that innovation Africa-style engenders. I’d like to give a little update on what’s been happening and where we’re going with AfriGadget in the near future. If you’d like to help in some way, please contact me.
Some AfriGadget Groups
AfriGadget Flickr Group - We have an image gallery on Flickr that you can take part in. Tag your images “AfriGadget” and add them to the AfriGadget group.
AfriGadget Facebook Group - Just started this month, the AfriGadget Facebook group is a place that you can talk to other AfriGadget readers and find like-minded friends.
Website Redesign
This has been a long time coming. The current site has some problems that we’d like to “fix” via a redesign. We’ll still be using WordPress, but want to make it more accessible and increase the breadth of information available. Feedback indicates that people like the look and feel of the current site, so we’ll try and stay pretty true to what you see now.
There has been an ever increasing number of emails asking for more information on specific projects, as well as a great deal of interest from people who want to purchase some of the items that we’ve shown on AfriGadget. We’re going to be building in some of those features into the new site.
Helping Micro-Entrepreneurs
I’ve had a number of interviews by different media outlets over the last couple months, and one specific interview by a South African radio company really hit me. They asked, “How does AfriGadget help the Africans who are beings showcased?”. I didn’t have an answer - or, I did, but the answer was “not at all”.
In the new site, we would like to work with an organization like Kiva, and their partners, to create ways for people to invest in some of the entrepreneurs that we talk about. In the cases where it makes sense, we’ll also help the entrepreneurs sell some of their items via our website.
Growing AfriGadget
The website initiative is only one of the three that we’re planning for this year. If we can find the right partners, we’ll be announcing some projects that a couple AfriGadget editors will be leading that are, quite frankly, much more exciting and “big” than a website redesign. As we grow AfriGadget we’re looking for partners who can help us. Contact me if you’d like to know more about those initiatives!
All of us do AfriGadget on the side. The growth of the site that I have outlined above is meant to benefit the innovators in Africa, not those of us who manage and create content for this site.
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From: AfriGadget
Read This Entry & More At AfriGadget
I found a story about a young Malawian who had built a windmill from scratch to help power the lights in his rural home. When I showed up at TED Global in Arusha in June, I had no idea that I would meet him. At thatfree ringtones for 1 minute. point, he hadn’t been introduced to the larger TED community, so I was this lone excited voice squawking about how thrilled I was to meet him.
2 Days later, William Kamkwamba was introduced to the TED community on stage:
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