The William Okpo Fashion Line

via Style Like You:

The concept behind the William Okpo line is inspired by the parents of the Okpo sisters. Daughters of Nigerian immigrants, Darlene and Lizzy were motivated by the interplay of their parent’s personal style with the American culture.

With William Okpo, the Okpo sisters wish to illustrate the unique aesthetic that results from the juxtaposition of the immigrant’s sense of style against American cultural sensibilities, offering the modern feminine designs with touches of masculine elements. William Okpo is for women who celebrate their cultivated sense of style.

Taking Farming to the Sea

In Worldwatch:

Nourishing the Planet discusses farming seaweed, an environmentally friendly crop that holds promise of mitigating greenhouse gases while supplementing incomes, providing dietary protein, and offering a sustainable source of biofuel.

Birritu Express - Online Money Exchange Service

Tadias reports:

“Birritu Express was created by Ethiopians to meet the specific needs of the global Ethiopian community “It is designed to be the most inexpensive, convenient and secure way to transfer funds to Ethiopia from abroad.”

The Ethiopian Diaspora’s annual income is estimated to be tens of billions of dollars , about equal to Ethiopia’s gross domestic product, according to Precise Consult International, organizers of The World Bank and USAID backed annual Ethiopian Diaspora business conference. Crude calculations using remittance figures ($1.1 billion in the first 9 months of 2006 & 2007 alone) show that the gross income of Ethiopians in the Diaspora is in the range of 10-20 billion dollars per year, roughly equal to the home country’s GDP of $13 billion in 2006.

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'Mediated Matter'

From the MIT Media Lab:

Mediated Matter research integrates computational form-finding strategies with biologically inspired fabrication in order to enhance the relation between natural and man-made environments. The group seeks to establish new forms of design, and novel processes of material practice at the intersection of computer science, material engineering, design and ecology.

Caranda Ginger January

From Caranda Fine Foods,the bracing delights of Ginger Tea:

Image courtesy of Caranda

Ginger is a very special herb or spice with significant healing powers and soothing magic. This amazing herb enhances the teas that we have selected for you with a bright, clean taste of a mild yet spicy ginger note. The flavor is an upper note of an earthy spice in our Ginger Nectar Rooibos Herb Tea. The Rooibos introduces an even honey note. If you enjoy the kick of ginger then also travel to the world of our green teas. We are pleased to offer our Sencha Ginger Green Tea. The lemon verbena and lavender flower makes this green tea a true star. The rich taste of the sencha blended with dry ginger adds a very lovely taste and aroma when sipping our Ginger Green sencha tea. The black tea for this month has a bold tea character. The selection is our Ginger Lemon Black Tea from our flavored black tea collection. An energy lifting morning boost is how our founder’s grandmother referred to this tea.

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Caranda Foods

Activespaces | An Incubator

The VOA reports on Activspaces:

Image courtesy of Africa News

Zinger Systems began as a business idea in the minds of a few Cameroonian entrepreneurs. After they spent one year developing their academic software and business model at Activspaces, a technology hub in southwest of the country, they eventually launched their business and now employ eight people.

Activspaces is a shared office space where designers, software developers, artists and more can gather.

“We’ve realized that many enterprising techies work in isolation in Cameroon," said the space's community manager, Al Banda. "They’re struggling to solve problems that have been tackled before. But they’re trying to do this by themselves in these tiny silos. We think that by bringing people together, we’re building a community centered around technology and pushing ideas together with a strong group spirit.”...[continue reading]

Mifuko

Along the Helsinki-Nairobi-axis

Mifuko Oy is a Finnish design company, which co-operates with several small artisan workshops in Kenya...While the designs are done by Finnish artists they are inspired by the colours, textures and vibrancy of Africa. Every product is designed in such a way as to utilize traditional craftsmanship and available materials.

'Africa Adorned'

An Design Indaba report on the recently concluded Africa Adorned exhibition:

Design Afrika in collaboration with Cowhide Concepts, Mantis Prints, Sue Clark, Seringa Living, Guidemore Chigama and Gather present a platform for showcasing South African and African creative products of the highest quality.

From leather accessories to beaded jewellery, home interior products and textiles, Africa Adorned caters to all creative tastes.

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Support Women Palm Oil Processors at the Unreasonable Marketplace

Unreasonable Institute finalist Nne Abraham on her Palm Oil processing enterprise:

What is your solution to this need? Describe your business strategy.
The program "From To Market" means that we takeover the processing ( with modern Palm Oil processing mills from Bank of Industry), Packaging of the product to avoid adulteration) and Marketing both locally and internationally, with 100% profit, 50% to the rural women, 20% to stakeholders, Coordinators and facilitators, while the organization takes 30%. Profit margin in the export market will be over 200%, both the organization and its members also have additional 100% profit each from storage of this product. The organization is planning to build a Palm Oil Refinery with a storage facility of 30 million liters, with this we will be making $30 million annually, and positively impacting on the lives of ten (10) million rural women and youths throughout Nigeria.

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Orhuee Couture

Orhue Guobadia's Orhuee Couture is

...made from 100% cotton, 100% linen and top quality Bazin riche. Orhuee Designs are a mix of Africa and Arabia infused with detailed embroidery in all style. All clothes are embroidered, NOT printed.

The design is driven by artistic, modern and luxurious style. The modernism is expressed in the dresses that flow freely, the elegance in the detailed embroidery and the richness in the African material used. The woman wearing Orhuee is embracing her culture and curve in a unique way only she can.

Making DIY Biology

DIY Biologist Charlie Schick, Molecularist & Founder of Practical Microbes at Ignite:

Apply to African Diaspora Marketplace II

The 2nd African Diaspora Marketplace business plan competition is now open:

The ADM encourages sustainable economic growth and employment by supporting U.S.-based African Diaspora entrepreneurs with innovative and high-impact ideas for start-up and established businesses in Africa. The new Marketplace will incorporate key learning from the first African Diaspora Marketplace, by focusing grants toward priority, high-impact sectors in Africa, including agribusiness, renewable energy, and information and communication technology (ICT). To expand upon their previous success, Western Union and USAID will invite small business investment funds and technical assistance mentors to participate in the effort to engage Diaspora entrepreneurs.

Previous winners include:

AMAD Metal Manufacturing (Ethiopia) is establishing a Metal fabrication plant to manufacture a variety of metal products and components from raw materials. The components include trailers, mobile cranes, enclosures, furniture, and bins. Ethiopia provides an exceptional market opportunity due to its expanding economy, and the market opportunities for quality products are exponential.

and

EarthWise Ferries (Uganda) will reestablish, manage, and operate a fast-ferry transportation system on Lake Victoria, with destinations in Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania. Presently many people travel between these destinations each day via poorly-maintained roads, on trips often taking between 1 to 3 days. EWF ferries will travel the 300 km from Port Bell, Uganda to Mwanza, Tanzania in about 7 hours.Watch related video after the jump

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Do-It-Yourself Neuroscience

The Dana Foundation reports:

Traditionally, scientific research was the preserve of the wealthy and today the situation is not much different—while researchers need not be rich, almost all of them work in institutional laboratories using equipment that can be very expensive.

Recently, however, a do-it-yourself biology movement has emerged, and a symposium held at the 41st annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Washington, DC, earlier this month described several innovative projects aimed at minimizing the cost of brain research and making it accessible to everyone.

“If astronomy were like neuroscience, you’d need a Ph.D. to look through a telescope,” says Tim Marzullo, who chaired the symposium. “It’s ridiculous—the technology for recording nervous impulses is 90 years old and there’s no reason why it can’t be brought into schools.”

2 channel 'Spiker box' from Backyard Brains

Marzullo and his colleague Greg Gage are doing just that. Three years ago, they founded Backyard Brains, a small company that manufactures neuroscience kits out of cheap off-the-shelf electronics purchased from outlets such as Radio Shack and distributes them to high schools and colleges, with the help of grant funding from the National Institutes of Health.

“I come from a family of teachers,” says Marzullo. “Backyard Brains came out of my love of neuroscience, education and building things. We see ourselves as part of a broader movement of DIY hackers who are trying to build just-good-enough versions of gear to reduce the barrier to entry.”...[continue reading]

Ethiopian Mustard

In WorldWatch:

Photo credit: UPenn.edu

Ethiopian mustard (also known as Abyssinian mustard) lacks the bitterness of its better known cousin, kale. It’s rich in vitamins C and K, and beta carotene and calcium, as well as cancer-fighting anti-oxidants. Ethiopian mustard also produces more leaves per plant than kale and a few leaves can be removed at a time for home consumption, allowing the rest of the plant to continues to grow.

Despite its nutritional qualities, Ethiopian mustard has largely been overlooked in favor of calorie-rich staple grains. Despite its nutritional qualities, Ethiopian mustard—like many of Africa’s indigenous leafy greens—has largely been overlooked in favor of calorie-rich staple grains by researchers and farmers. As a result, the genetic diversity of the plant has dwindled. But through breeding programs, researchers are working to develop the strain’s genetic diversity for disease resistance, its applicability as a cooking oil, and as a material for industrial production.

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B’Exotio Fashion

Belina Otas speaks with the founder of B’Exotio,Beatrice Arthur:

Image courtesy of cut from a different cloth

On the styles she creates:

My concept was mixing linen and cotton fabrics with hand-woven clothes like kente, mudcloth and aso-oke. I focused a lot on the embroidery of multi-ethnic symbolism, and it was great fun to reflect my Russian and Akan heritage by mixing Cyrillic letters with Adinkra Symbols on my garments.

And her favorite fabrics

I used predominantly plain cottons and linens. They better suit the African climate. I also worked with silk and wool. Occasionally, I used a bit of polyester. In recent times, I work with tule and lace and organza and fabrics with lurex. I have experimented with plastics and zippers. I love recycling old clothing. I enjoy patchworks. Painting, adding sequins, shell, recycled glass beads.

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Yaw Anokwa | Computer Scientist

GeekWire interviews Yaw Anokwa:

Yaw Anokwa (Photo: Annie Laurie Malarkey)

Coolest thing about what you do:
My current project is Open Data Kit (ODK), a free and open-source set of tools which helps organizations create mobile data collection solutions with smartphones and cloud infrastructure. In addition to socio-economic and health surveys with GPS locations and images, ODK is being used to create decision support for clinicians and for building multimedia-rich nature mapping tools. All this is possible because the cellphone has become the ubiquitous computing device. In places where there is no running water or reliable power, you’ll often find a cellphone and Internet connectivity. ODK started as a research project to use that ubiquity to make data collection and information delivery more efficient. For example, AMPATH in Kenya has been using ODK for their HIV home-based counseling and testing program. Their counselors go house to house with phones running ODK. The software walks them through a standardized counseling and testing protocol and the geo-tagged results are sent to their OpenMRS medical record system using WiFi or GPRS. AMPATH has reached some 65,000 individuals and has been able to rapidly and cost-effectively identify individuals at significant risk from HIV, saving lives.

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Peter Miano | Innovator

Zeynab Wandati of NTV (Kenya) reports on the work of tinkerer, Peter Miano:

The Rise of the Citizen Engineer contd.

The 2011 Creative Sydney conference highlights a theme covered earlier:

Open source culture provides blueprints to create almost anything. Forums, hackerspaces and networks offer expertise and opportunities for collaboration. Rapid prototyping and 3D printing automate the building process and make it instantaneous. So what does the great tech leap forward mean for creativity. Designers, artists and technologists explain how they are transforming the production process, democratizing technology and empowering people to become citizen engineers. Watch parts 1,2 & 3 after the jump

via Shapeways

One Fabrication Lab per School: the FabLab@School

Image courtesy of Fablearn

Paulo Blikstein creator of the Gogo board on the need to tinker and fabricate using a Fablab@School model:

Online Music at Iroking

CP-Africa reports:

Iroking, pronounced [I Rocking], a new media addition to Nigerian media company, Iroko Partners is set to be Nigeria’s new music home with endorsements from top Nigerian artistes. The company also recently launched IrokoTV, its dedicated online destination for Nollywood movies.