New SMS Services in Uganda from Grameen, Google & MTN

Hash reports:

Grameen Foundation’s AppLab has released a new suite of mobile phone applications developed in Uganda, using Google SMS Search and in partnership with MTN Uganda as the mobile operator. The services include:
-Farmer’s Friend: a searchable database with both agricultural advice and targeted weather forecasts
-Health Tips: provides sexual and reproductive health information
-Clinic Finder: helps locate nearby health clinics and their services
-Google Trader: matches buyers and sellers of agricultural produce and commodities as well as other products. Local buyers and sellers, such as small-holder farmers, are able to broaden their trading networks and reduce their transaction costs. (known locally as “Akatale SMS”)

More Here
Watch associated video here:

Comaco

COMACO is a model for rural development that supports natural resource management. It operates through a community-owned trading centre... Community residents benefit from this trading centre by receiving high market value for goods they produce and having access to affordable farmer inputs and improved farming skills on the condition that they adopt land use practices that help conserve their area's natural resources-company website

Their ItsWild product range include:
-Chalimbana peanut butter
-Luangwa valley honey
-Chama rice

Contemporized Fashion

African Fashion loosens its ethnic constraints-African Fashion Week:

Image: Taibo Bacar and a piece from his collection.
via BBC

M’Afrique by Moroso

Patrizia Moroso discusses the M’Afrique event by Moroso

...multifaceted, modern Africa deserves to be known and sustained for the originality of the creative languages with which it enriches global culture. The African continent is extraordinarily rich in creativity, materials and ideas that are sources of inspiration and nourishment for us. When applied to design, they engender products which exude tradition and modernity, innovation and history, form and beauty...

Image:the making of Madame Dakar by Bibi Seck and Ayse Birse
More here

Africa Could Feed and Fuel the World

In AppAfrica:

Two recent articles point to the scientific realities of the African continent and the potential it has for tremendously enhancing the sustainability of the growing world population. The first, published last year argues that the vastly uninhabited regions of the northern continent where the Sahara desert stretches, could be used to build massive solar farms that could theoretically power the whole planet. The second, published more recently suggests that Africa could also feed most of the worlds population with it’s vast stretches of fertile soil and uninhabited land...[continue reading]

Classifying Bananas-Margaret Onyango

In Biodiversity:

Apple bananas produce small fruits (less than 15 cm long) that are gaining favour in East African and European markets. But the fruits on the market vary both in quality and in their appeal to consumers. That is because the Apple group is made up of more than a dozen closely related varieties—some of which may be one and the same despite having different names, while others may be different varieties even though they bear the same name. Sorting out the characteristics of each variety, as Onyango plans to do, will help the farmers to offer a more reliable product

More here.

DatAgro

From Datadyne, DatAgro:

...allows rural farming cooperatives in Latin America, beginning with Chile, to define the types of information most critical to their lives and livelihoods and receive it via text messages...The system, which uses MIP technology created by DataDyne.org ( designed to work even over slow, less-than-GPRS networks, by using the latest techniques in data compression/decompression to transmit and receive by enhanced SMS. This aspect of the project, by allowing viewing of news and information on commonly used cell phones, will enormously expand the population able to benefit from the system...[continue reading]

via MobileActive

Backyard Metal Casting

Make points us to a treasure trove on casting.An answer to a question on melting metal is answered thus:

Melting metal is simple and if you are good at building things then you'll definitly have no trouble building a furnace. Most people say to start with a charcoal burning furnace...because it is dead simple to use. But people who end up really enjoying metalcasting tend to advance toward a more convenient fuel such as propane.

More here.

AutoFabbing

Robyn Dixon reporting in the LA Times highlights dexterous Automobile fabbers:

Somewhere, a relentless tinny hammering rises. Shrieks of grinding metal shatter the air. A curlicue of acrid smoke spirals lazily as a worker melts a plastic Japanese bumper using a heated chisel, smoothing the surface as carefully as a mother frosting a birthday cake.

More here.
via Agege Labs
photo courtesy of Robyn Dixon

Fablab Kenya

The seeding process continues, FabLab Kenya launches:

...it will empower individuals to create smart devices for themselves. These devices can be tailored to local or personal needs in ways that are practical and economical...[continue reading]

via Nubian Cheetah

Quick Hits

Faces of small businesses in Malawi-IFC
Rwanda and the 'digital divide'-Techcrunch
Ruchugi Salt Works-Bid Network
Ethnic specialty vegetables...look for the African Eggplant!
Cultivating Native Woods...Lessons for Africa?

The Business of Health

Nelly Nyagah reporting in Trade Invest:

Healthcare represents a significant investment opportunity, yet current consumer demand continues to be unmet in most sub-Saharan countries. For instance, an estimated 18,000 wealthy Nigerians travel abroad every year to seek medical care, while in Kenya at least 5% of the total stated demand for healthcare is not satisfied due to limited access to services and products.

More here

Sorghum Hybrid Innovator-Gebisa Ejeta

Introducing the 2009 World Food Prize winner:

Gebisa Ejeta of Ethiopia, whose sorghum hybrids resistant to drought and the devastating Striga weed have dramatically increased the production and availability of one of the world’s five principal grains and enhanced the food supply of hundreds of millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa.

More here
via African Loft

Africa Venture Capital Fellows

From the WEF site:

The Africa Venture Capital Fellows (AVCF) is an initiative of the World Economic Forum's Global Leaders of Tomorrow (GLT) program aimed at promoting venture capital in Africa by educating and training future venture capitalists and leaders of high-growth and early stage companies based in Africa. The initiative is being established based on the important role that venture capital can play in accelerating the entrepreneurial economy in Africa.

The MultiMachine as a Roadmap

Fundamentally speaking one of the most essential components of any industrial ecosystem is the machine tool a device which is used to “fabricate metal components of machines“. Consequently the absence of a machining capacity precludes the ability of an entity (regional,national and or continent-wide) to industrialize.The question then becomes how do we effectively seed and propagate the skill of machining cheaply and pervasively? How do we Bootstrap the Industrial Age? The open source MultiMachine presents us with what could turn out to be one of the more attractive options...[continue reading]
Cross-posted from the Maker Faire Blog

Shama Group

Founded by Joseph Ndungu the Shama Group is an integrated community focused agri-business its interests include,fish farming,piggeries and crop production. Some of the constituent firms are:
Shama Fish & Bacon
Shama Milk
Shama Academy

Building a Solar Fridge

AIDG reports on an effort by MSU students to construct a solar fridge:

The Internet is stacked with academic knowledge on solar adsorption refrigeration, but our team has the goal of developing a system and assembly instructions that can be used by anybody. Our adsorption refrigerator design uses passive solar energy rather than electricity and has no moving parts. But before the adsorption process can be understood, it is necessary to understand the basics of refrigeration. All fridges operate on the principal that a liquid boiling to a gas takes heat away from its surroundings. It is also important to know that a liquid can be made to boil at a very low temperature by altering the pressure. While water boils at 100°C at atmospheric pressure, it can be boiled at 0°C under a very high vacuum.

More here.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Alternative refrigeration (makezine.com)

Trickle-Up Innovation

Businessweek reports on trickle-up innovation from the developing world:

Bee Fences

Oxford University media reports on BeeHive fences:

The fence is constructed of log beehives suspended on poles beneath tiny thatched roofs (to keep off the sun). The hives are connected by eight metre lengths of fencing wire. Elephants avoid the hives and will attempt to push through the wire but this causes the hives to swing violently causing the elephants to fear an attack of angry bees.
The results of a pilot study in Kenya, published in the African Journal of Ecology, show that a farm protected by the beehive fence had 86 per cent fewer successful crop raids by elephants and 150 per cent fewer raiding elephants than a control farm without the fence.

More here
via TreeHugger
Photo:Member of the construction team with the beehive fence built for the pilot study. Photo via OU/Lucy King

Africa Index ETF

via Van Eck Global

The Africa Index ETF seeks to replicate as closely as possible, before fees and expenses, the price and yield performance of the Dow Jones Africa Titans 50 IndexSM. The Index provides exposure to publicly traded companies that are headquartered in Africa or that generate the majority of their revenues in Africa. As such, the Fund is subject to the risks of investing in this region.

Read related coverage here and here for other ETF funds