Meet the Maker Faire Africa makers

Taylor Martin presents the fabbers from MFA10

Maker Faire Africa 2010 from Taylor Martyn on Vimeo.

JoinAfrica-an Open Source High-Speed Data Network

Fabfi, the open source platform for building large-scale mesh wireless network infrastructure, and Afrimesh, the platform-agnostic, open dashboard for network management, have joined forces to build a turnkey platform for deploying, managing and monetising high-speed data networks under the codename JoinAfrica-Fabfi Blog

Creative Gadgets at Maker Faire Africa

Fast Company reports:

The U.S.-based iterations of Maker Faire, annual celebrations of all things DIY (we attended Maker Faire Bay Area), are famous for their out-of-this-world gadgets and contraptions. Maker Faire Africa is no different. Now in its second year, the Nairobi, Kenya-based fair showcases everything from porridge-cooking machines (above) to solar-powered computer kiosks made out of oil drums (below)...[continue reading]

Husking machine takes off

Spore updates us on the work of fonio processor inventor Sanoussi Diakité.He:

...recently made six new machines available to communities in four locations in the Senegalese regions of Tambacounda, Kédougou, Sédhiou and Kolda. The machine can husk 50 kg of fonio per hour, while a woman can only process about a kilo by hand in the same time. Unlike manual husking, the machine leaves little sand in the husked fonio. The tedious nature of this task, coupled with its low yield, have led to fonio cultivation being virtually abandoned in areas where it was traditionally the staple cereal.

Create a full-scale machine shop

Cross-posted from the MakerfaireAfrica Blog:

2009 MakerFaireAfrica participant Pat Delany of the MultiMachine fame presents "A full-scale machine shop" built along similar principals:

4 simple, cheap tools for Africa

View more presentations from Emeka_Okafor.

Moving up the Cocoa value chain-Ivory Coast

Africa Good News reports:

courtesy of AGN

Ivory Coast is on track to become the world's top cocoa grinder in the next few years as the West African state seeks more value from its raw materials exports.Investments in cocoa processing facilities in the country, already the No. 1 grower of the main ingredient in chocolate, have pushed its share of the global grind up sharply since 2008 and could allow it to overtake the Netherlands for the top spot as early as next season."We're the world's biggest cocoa producer. We will also be the world's biggest grinder," said Ali Lakis, the director of cocoa export firm SAF Cacao, which handled a fifth of the beans arriving at the port of San Pedro so far this season...[continue reading]

Robotocist,Entreprenuer-Solomon King

Founder of Elemental Edge and Node Six,Solomon King discusses his hacking of robots:

courtesy of the Rogue King

Last December, I gave you Rover, my first autonomous vehicle / prototype. My dreams for him where very very many, like, for starters, removing those blasted bumpers (tactile sensors) and replacing them with sonar ranging. Unfortunately, time and money wouldn’t permit. I got held up with other things and then realized that programming sonar range-finding in Assembly is not the same as programming simple input/outputs. Also, I didn’t have any sonar modules to work with.Eventually, I got so busy I never even stepped into the lab for almost 5 months. Until recently...[continue reading]

Kemi Adetiba-Video Director

LadyBrille profiles the work of Kemi Adetiba:

A fashionista at heart and the only female out of Nigeria who shoots and directs music videos, of course you know Ladybrillenigeria.com would be paying close attention to the work of emerging director Kemi Adetiba. One thing we have noticed, over time, is Adetiba raises the bar and really pushes herself to excel and improve the quality of her work, each time. Her videos “like fine wine” only gets better with time. A clear example and indication Adetiba has the “hunger,” passion and desire to do “serious damage” in Nigeria’s music industry is seen with her current and recent video ‘More You’ for her client and musician Bez.

More here
Watch the latest video she directed after the jump:

Bez - More You from Kemi Adetiba on Vimeo.

Jugaad (Indian Maker) in Action

The Economist reports on the work of Santosh Ostwal who developed a mobile-phone adaptation that triggers irrigation pumps remotely:
The problem:

There are 3.1 million official connections of water pump sets in Maharashtra alone. The all-India figure is more than 1 billion. While farmers didn’t mind too much with the drill of walking up to the farm to switch on their motor pump sets and then head back home, I found that there was a strong resistance to walk back all the way to the farm to switch off their pump sets. A lot of water and electricity would be wasted. A 5 HP motor which wastes 4 to 5 hours of water daily not only consumes upto 1000 litres per day, but also results in soil erosion which decreases the yield… And then in that 15 day period for me, I decided, ‘Yes. This is my career and I am going to make my career in irrigation automation. That’s all.’ This was in 1991.

His award winning solution:

For about 9 months, I was not having any bread and butter at all. Me, my wife and my two kids… I was driven out of the house by the house owner and really came on the road in 2002. I was unable to fuel my innovations anymore. Sustainability was totally finished. But (at the time) thanks to mobile phone technology, one fine morning of Ganesh Chaturthi in 2003, I thought to myself, ‘why do I have to go for these licenses? Why can’t I try the same technology by using wireless connectivity of the mobile phone? I immediately tried the same technology with wireless connectivity of the mobile and surprisingly, I can tell you within 15 minutes, I got the result using the bulky Motorolla T 180 mobile ha ha ha! So instead of investing in a license, I piggy-backed on the wireless connectivity of the mobile phone. And since the day was Ganesh chaturthi, I chose the name of my service as ‘Ganesh’ which over time was changed to ‘Nano Ganesh,’ as the mobile phones kept getting smaller in size.

More here

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Geofeed

In AhmadMukoshy:

Geofeed is a web based application location aggregator...which allows you to save, share and find places in Africa

The founders are:

...building a place finder…We want to allow you to keep a track of your spots, moments at those spots and also share with your friends.With Geofeed.me you can spot best places, using the upcoming intelligent search tool.

Emerging African Consumers

In FT's BeyondBrics:

courtesy of the FT

If you weren’t already convinced of Africa’s growth story, here’s another quote to add to the ever-growing chorus of investors keen on the continent, courtesy of Mark Richards of Actis, one of the biggest private equity funds focused on emerging markets. He tells beyondbrics that “Africa is our DNA.”Actis has backed a 100 per cent management buyout of a leading Egyptian credit card chip maker on Tuesday. The $30m deal, which highlights the importance of the emerging African consumer, comes as private equity hawks circle the continent, and Indian and Chinese companies come rushing in.

More here

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• Emerging 'Africa Lions' (africaunchained.blogspot.com)

Fish Farming - The Videos

A compendium of videos highlighting the growing business of aquaculture:

and here

In Ghana

Retail Tower

MEST covered earlier spawns another startup Retail Tower, whose aim is to "enable online merchants to effectively market their products on shopping channels and marketplaces"Their ChannelManager application:

...feature handles the complex challenges of managing multiple data feed formats and submission to shopping comparison engines and marketplaces. Merchants can submit their inventory to shopping comparison engines and expand their reach

Quick Hits

The story of Bola Akinlawon from rice hawker to founder of Native Cuisine Catering Services-Daily Sun
Another fabber, airframe builder Ilia Vincent Omaje
"The suits think you can’t do biotech out in the garage. But the suits are wrong."-Eri Gantry
Rethinking Schumacher "local ownership and local innovation can be applied to today’s mobile world..."
Samuel Odofin's Biotechnology Blog

Muya Ethiopia

Muya Ethiopia crafts authentic, high quality, handmade household products inspired by traditional Ethiopian patterns for wholesale export. Muya’s product range includes beautifully woven soft furnishings,such as cushion covers, runner rugs, cotton throws, and table settings, distinctive fashion accessories like handbags and shawls, and exotic pottery and furniture-website
via Women Exporters

Glass Forming Academy

Glass Forming Academy, is a contemporary glass training facility in Pretoria, South Africa. This facility provides training in bead making, kiln forming, and glass blowing teqhniques. GFA aims to promote the beauty and versatility of glass through qualified instructors presenting worshops in a relaxed environment. Courses range from day activities to extended workshops with various entry levels-website

Outsourcing Expands

Afrik News reports on the growth of outsourcing, the added question should be, are they climbing up the value chain?:

Courtesy of BPO biz

A study conducted by AT Kearney has indicated that seven African countries are among the top 50 global outsourcing destinations for IT services, also known as offshoring. Egypt, Ghana, Mauritius, Tunisia, Morocco, South Africa and Senegal are among the preferred destinations...Ghana, Egypt and Senegal, which are among the top The sub-Saharan countries with low labor costs, are attracting more and more contact centers. And to deal with the time difference between them and their western counterparts, contact centers adjust their working hours to correspond with countries such as France, the United Kingdom, the United States, etc...Ghana, Egypt and Senegal, which are among the top The sub-Saharan countries with low labor costs, are attracting more and more contact centers. And to deal with the time difference between them and their western counterparts, contact centers adjust their working hours to correspond with countries such as France, the United Kingdom, the United States, etc.

More here

Icheki-Tracking Transportation

The MIT-AITI collaboration continues to spur innovation,Africa Media Network reports:

iCheki, a system that commuters can use to track matatus (mini buses popular in Kenya) and buses coming their way won US$3,000 (Kshs 240,000) in the 2010 MIT-AITI mobile programming business competition held at Strathmore University on 30th July. The system was conceptualized by the Xrystalgenius group made of DBIT (Diploma in Business Information Technology) graduates: Joseph Kivuva, Alex Nyika, Kelvin Yonga and Dominic Mativo.
iCheki is derived from the sheng slang spoken in Kenya. Cheki means see in sheng. So iCheki is seeing through the phone. Using the system, commuters can know how far the next matatu is from their location and predict how long it will take to get to them using the GPS (Global Positioning System) and LAI (Local Area Identity) systems on mobile platforms. The system can also be used by freight managers to tell the location of their vehicles at any time. The group said they will use the money they won to develop the system further.

More here

"Making Do" a book on Making

A treatise on Making, and a must read Making Do by Steve Daniels:

Wandering through winding alleys dotted with makeshift worksheds, one can’t help but feel clouded by the clanging of hammers on metal, grinding of bandsaws on wood, and the shouts of workers making sales. But soon it becomes clear that this cacophony is really a symphony of socioeconomic interactions that form what is known as the informal economy. In Kenya, engineers in the informal economy are known as jua kali, Swahili for “hot sun,” because they toil each day under intense heat and with limited resources. But despite these conditions, or in fact because of them, the jua kali continuously demonstrate creativity and resourcefulness in solving problems

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Talata Celebrations

Founder Talata Maldima-Provencal on what spurred her:

I created the Talata Celebrations with the passion for providing clients with fresh and beautiful custom designs that enhances the uniqueness of their special event. From the moment your guests open the envelope, your paper details from start to finish should be a reflection of you and your one-of-a-kind event.My natural inclination towards intimate and artistic design fit so well with wedding and celebrations stationery. There is so much love and emotion surrounding a wedding - I feel so lucky to be part of such a special day in people's lives. All of the weddings that I design for have a special place in my heart - each one is unique and beautiful.

Via Yayemarieba

Iyange Industries

Dairy company "...Inyange offers Fresh Milk, which is delivered daily, from surrounding farms. It is first tested for quality and freshness before it enters the production line, where it will be homogenized and pasteurized before being packed into Inyange final products, thus delivering quality and great taste..."-website
Their products include:

-Fresh Milk
-Fresh Skimmed Milk
-Fresh Cream
-Yoghurt

via JPN's Blog

UniquEco-Flip Flop Recycling

An example of a NGO initiated for-profit run recycling business.Global Post profiles UniquEco :

Courtesy of Tugela Ridley Global Post

“It all started with kids making toys out of sticks and thorns and flip-flops,” said Julie Church, the 40-year old Kenyan environmental scientist behind UniquEco, a Nairobi-based company that turns old flip-flops into new products. Working in turtle conservation on Kiwayu Island in the Kiunga Marine National Reserve off Kenya’s northeast coast, Church watched as children collected broken chunks of flip-flop from the high-water line to fashion into the wings for little aeroplanes, modeled on the ones they saw flying overhead ferrying tourists to their resorts. The kids would play with these homemade toys for hours and each flip-flop they collected was one less to block the sea turtle’s nesting sites.
“The project evolved from there,” said Church, standing in the UniquEco workshop in Nairobi. Around her a dozen men and women busily cleaned, cut, glued, shaped and sanded old flip-flops. Once the flip-flops were glued together the craftsmen and women had big lumps of colorfully striated rubber to work with...[continue reading]

Mobile Gutenberg, Banking Papacy

Jon Gosier at Appfrica on the disruptive potential of mobile money, shades of the Cathedral and the Bazaar:

Photo courtesy of WhiteAfrican

The comparison to mobile is that for most of the world, the mobile phone is even more of a disruptor than the Internet and the personal computing revolution. Mobile infrastructure, in general reaches more people of varying classes (the poorest to the richest) around the globe than the internet. So if mobile is the great disruptor, then what exactly is being disrupted? I don’t think mobile alone is disrupting governments or news agencies, at least not as much as technologies in use on the Internet. Instead, I think the one institution that’s being totally unsettled by the proliferation of the mobile phone is none other than…the Bank.

More here

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Che Edoga and building Robots

Robotocist Che Edoga "...latest robot is called Biayered-X,it is a bioloid recreation of a robot originally created by Asurada. It is a hybrid Quad humanoid that I am using to explore the concept of a multi-flexible robot chassis..."
Watch his 'squidword' rocket launcher after the jump

Quick Hits

Syndys Cakes is a thriving, boutique bakery.
Nurturing innovation through “Egypt’s Nasdaq”
VisionSpring and Living Goods "Business in a Bag" Model
Nigerian herbal medicines and malaria via Tropika
A Mobile Payment Trifecta in Kenya-Hash

Arduino: The Documentary

For those open source hardware types out there, Arduino: The Documentary

TRAILER Arduino: The Documentary (available on HD) from gnd on Vimeo.

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Frederick Msiska-Inventor

 Communicating science the African way profiles Frederick Msiska a Malawian farmer and inventor:

Frederick is a science hero, an innovator who used as much as possible local materials to produce a handheld chemical sprayer, a biogas toilet that lights his office, charges his mobile phone and operates a fan. His biogas toilet amongst other things uses a branch from the mululuzga tree, half a spoon of tea, maize bran, and an empty box of chibuku! (If anyone knows the English translation of a mululuzga tree – please let me know it apparently produces acid).

More here

Gregory Mchopa (Artist) and the power of Online tools

The Google Africa Blog on the ecommerce success of Gregory Mchopa Joshua To writes:

Gregory suffered not for lack of passion or talent, but from the lack of technologies and services that could broadcast his work to a far wider audience. After returning to the States, I decided to take on an independent project and worked with BRUTE LABS (a non-profit I founded with several other Googlers) to build a simple website, www.mchopa.com, that would bring Gregory's work before a global audience. Using several Google tools that are free and easy to use - App Engine, Checkout, Spreadsheets, Gmail - we developed a website and interface for Gregory that serves as an open source model for other artists in the developing world seeking to showcase and sell their work.
Since the launch of mchopa.com in 2009, Gregory has sold 47 paintings and kept all of the profits. Perhaps more significantly, Gregory's web presence has connected him with gallery representatives and individual collectors in the US, Canada, and the UK, many of whom have requested custom works for display. The culture of the Maasai has now spread to people around the world.

More here

TRY Women's Oyster Harvesting Association

Christi Zaleski writing in Worldchanging:

In 2007, a group of oyster harvesters organized themselves into a producer association called TRY Women's Oyster Harvesting Association. The founding members decided to call the organization TRY because it was an effort to do just that-try to improve the situation for oyster harvesters without much certainty that their work would pay off. After some initial success raising funds to buy boats, membership in TRY grew rapidly from 14 women in just one village to 500 oyster harvesters from 15 communities across the Greater Banjul Area.

More here

Maki Oh

Amaka Osakwe's Maki Oh and its raison d etre:

Fabric choices intimately explore African artisanal couture heritage, incorporating lustrous silks juxtaposed with raw organic fibres. The range consists of a combination of nudes, fused with earthy tones, the unmistakable indigo of adire; and its varying hues, and splashes of carnelian.
Rich features like hand-woven silk aso-oke dating back a hundred years, silk crepelines and silk jersey mixes are used in conjunction with hand-cut and stitched calabash pieces, a silk cotton hand-painted with the Yoruba starch paste 'eko', and a rare adire motif named 'sun-bebe', which was expertly painted by hand onto silk chiffon

Unlocking Local Funding for Private Equity Investments

In Ratio Magazine:

When the African Development Bank (AfDB), the Commonwealth and the Africa Venture Capital Association (AVCA) hosted the first East Africa Private Equity Roundtable together in Nairobi in May 2010, the intention was to engage African pension funds and other institutional investors: They are a potentially sizeable source of local funds for private equity investments and, the organizers argued, have not paid enough attention to the opportunities that this asset class presents...Michael Addo from Ghana’s SSNIT, for one, is a convert, and provided an enthusiastic narrative of how SSNIT began to look at private equity investments as a strategy to become more competitive after Ghana’s pension fund sector had been liberalized. At the moment, SSNIT set aside 3% of its entire portfolio for private equity investments, and currently has four PE funds that it works with: one local and three pan-African, one of which is focused on infrastructure investments.

More here

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