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11 items tagged "AfriGadget"
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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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16:01
From: AfriGadget
Read This Entry & More At AfriGadget
We just received some great news.
AfriGadget was included in Time Magazine’s list of 50 best sites for 2008.
This is quite an honor especially in light of the fact that AfriGadget is run entirely by volunteers. Good news though, our posting frequency should go up shortly as we have a team in the field sourcing stories right now.
As a primer to all things AfriGadget, here are links to our Flickr Group and Grassroots Reporting Project as well as a list of some of our favorite/most popular stories.
thanks,
The AfriGadget Team.
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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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20:17
From: AfriGadget
Read This Entry & More At AfriGadget
What does it take, out there in the field, to get an AfriGadget story?
Well, this video that I took back in the summer of 2007 shows Hash (aka WhiteAfrican) hard at work getting the Africa’s Modular Machines piece that went up in AfriGadget last November. Yes, the sound quality and camera work are atrocious but sometimes, opportunity just presents itself.
I am happy to report that as you can see, he was busy bringing Firefox to the people as he did this.
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19:24
From: AfriGadget
Read This Entry & More At AfriGadget
The Bamboo Bike, an endeavour that aims at building bicycles in a sustainable fashion using bamboo as the primary construction material, is a joint project run by Craig Calfree of Calfree Design, a high tech bicycle design firm based in California and The Earth Institute at Columbia University.
The bicycle is the primary mode of transport in Africa and it is used for everything from personal transportation to moving medicine and the sick to hospital. Sadly, the design used in most of Africa has not changed for the last 40 years to take into account the different ways in which the bicycle is used. In fact, most bikes in use in most of Africa today are based on a colonial British design tailored to individuals travelling short distances on smooth roads.
 
While making bike frames based on bamboo is not a new idea, most bamboo frame designs simply use bamboo for construction material in a traditional bike frame design. Leveraging the unique properties of bamboo such as its strength and flexibility to meet the specific needs of populations local to various parts of Africa is one of the primary rationale behind the Bamboo Bike project.
The team working on the Bamboo Bike project in the US, Ghana and Kenya among other locations have a interesting blog (last updated in the summer of 2007) that chronicles the struggles of the project team while on site in Africa.
Project gear including Bamboo Bikes and clothing is available on the Bamboo Bike and Calfree Design websites.
 
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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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9:38
From: AfriGadget
Read This Entry & More At AfriGadget
This is a continuation of Erik’s post on African Modular machines.
The video below shows how the machines are used in wood workshops to make design cutouts, carve out pieces for furniture and to split planks of wood. It is essentially the same machine pieces, motor, pulleys and frame, just customized for different uses. The customization is done in a small industry locally known as Jua Kali or Gikomba, where entrepreneurs like Mr. John Chege purchase them for use in small workshops like this.
When playing the video, please mute it, there is lots of noise from the machines.
(more…)
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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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7:05
From: AfriGadget
Read This Entry & More At AfriGadget
This is the walker most Ghanaian babies used to learn how to walk. Myself this is what I used to learn how to walk( Yes my mummy told me ).
For a baby to use it to learn how to walk it is very simple. The baby holds the horizontal bar at the top with the hands at both ends of the bar and he stands up on his/her feet and start pushing the walker. Two to three falls will get him or her to start being on his/her feet by him/her self and by the 7th to 8th falls, he/she should start moving the legs on his/her own and before you know it, your baby is walking.
This walker is simple, no ring bells around to keep the baby off focus on learning how to walk.
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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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