"A view of Africa and Africans with a focus on entrepreneurship, innovation, technology, practical remedies and other self sustaining activities.".....Emeka Okafor
In Spore agronomist Dennis Garrity discusses the benefits of Evergreen Agriculture:
acacias trees courtesy of wikipedia
What is evergreen agriculture and how does it work?
Evergreen agriculture is a practice where trees are intercropped in annual food crop and livestock systems. It sustains green cover on the land throughout the year and also involves the integration of appropriate fertiliser trees into agriculture. This approach bolsters nutrient supply through nitrogen fixation and nutrient cycling, and increases direct production of food, fodder, fuel, fibre and income from products produced by the trees. Such trees also greatly enhance carbon storage above-ground and below-ground compared to conventional agriculture, thus improving opportunities for rewards in the form of agricultural carbon offsets for farmers...[continue reading]
Designed to encourage reading, writing and responding, Yoza engages African youth with stories and social issues. The project, which was spearheaded by Steve Vosloo, a technology researcher in Cape Town, and financed by South Africa’s Shuttleworth Foundation, is dedicated to a participatory culture hungry for micro-doses of literature that are accessible as pixels not paper.
Officially launched last September, Yoza is based on Vosloo’s observations that African youth are book-poor yet mobile-rich. An estimated 90 percent of urban South African youth have access to cell phones, and 70 percent of those phones are web-enabled. In stark contrast, more than half of South African households own no leisure books and only 7 percent of public schools have functional libraries.
NIDF reports on the Lekki-Ikoyi Cable Stayed Link Bridge in Lagos,Nigeria:
The Lekki-Ikoyi link bridge is to be one of the first major cable stayed bridges to be built in West Africa. The 1.4km long bridge with a cable stayed pylon of 90m the middle and a full span approach and departing bridge linking admiralty way to Bourdillon road...[continue reading]Watch related video after the jump:
"Iced kenkey" is quick and easy to make. It is a popular inexpensive snack/street food sold throughout much of Ghana. It can tide people over until they can have a more filling meal. Iced kenkey is also used as a weaning food for children. "Iced kenkey" is never served hot (duh, right?)
The initial product now being test marketed is a refreshing traditional sweetened fermentedcorn and milkdrink known as ice kenkey. Incidentally, I have always called it "iced" kenkey, but that may be similar to the question of whether something is "ice" tea or "iced" tea in the U.S. At any rate, this is definitely a Ghanaian product...[continue reading]
The shift from consumption toward production has powered the rise of an entire movement of makers, people who trade ideas for creating their own tools, machines, and technologies, attend giant “Maker Faires” in cities across the country, and devour magazines like Popular Science and the new magazine called Make. Phil Torrone is Make’s online editor-at-large. He works out of an office in New York that also houses Adafruit Industries, which sells a catalog full of DIY kits that help people make useful stuff like an iPad charger for pennies. Torrone and his partner Limor Fried promote what they call a “citizen engineer” approach to life that has attracted 100,000 subscribers for the magazine and even more visitors to their Web sites. Their open-source approach means that every design and invention created in their community is made available free and participants help each other in the way that neighbors once offered advice to their fellow backyard mechanics as they leaned over an engine.
ASNAPP, Stellenbosch University and Sun International Hotel are investigating the possibility of cultivatingtable grapes in Livingstone, Zambia, for the rapidly growing touristindustry in the area and also for local consumption. A recent study has uncovered several opportunities for consideration, but also outlines other technical challenges that need to be surmounted to make a potential project both feasible and viable.
Medical Design and Invention Kits (MEDIKITS) are a series of lab-in-box kits that serve as “Erector sets” for medical devices. Our approach is nurter inventive behavior amongst “McGuyver docs and nurses” working in global health. We already know that they are coming up with ingenious ways around everyday problems.
In the interview, Tolu shared his passion for technology and for using it to make life easy for people.He started developing technology solutions as an experiment at a very young age because of how fascinating they were.
Magic Box
Last year, he developed the ‘Magic Box’, a device built to allow you control your electronic gadgets, for example, your TV from anywhere with your mobile phone.The ‘Magic Box’ also allows one to control electricity or mobilize/immobilize cars from anywhere in the world with the use of a mobile phone.I asked Tolu if I can control my home electronics from say, Kenya, and he said yes. According to him, as long as I can use my SIM card from anywhere in the world, I can simply send a signal to the box to control my TV, for instance.No wonder he called it ‘Magic Box’.
Tolu Iroye receiving his award for best use of technology at The Future Awards courtesy of vision of the future
The dynamic Ethiopian Commodity Exchange is further spreading its information feed, and now customers can access general information and their accounts through SMS and voice telephone (“Interactive Voice Receiver” or IVR) systems...The new system cost Birr 1.2 million (USD72,500) and it lets customers anywhere retrieve general information, including Ethiopian and international commodity prices, and details of their personal accounts on the ECX trading floor. All the information divulged through IVR or SMS is obtained directly from the ECX’s marketdata system.
I strive to make films, and empower others to make films, that are at the forefront of change; Where's the Fire? Filmworks is the housing ground for such work. The films to be a part of Where's the Fire? are entertaining, but also inspire pockets of the global community to think introspectively and to see themselves in one another.
eMobilis's mission "...is to create opportunities for local talent by training them on mobile and wirelesscellular technologies.We have only started to scrape the surface while exploring the opportunities for growth in the mobile industry in Kenya. It is our goal to ensure that localtalent is available and trained in order to recognize and exploit these opportunities..."
Her ambition is to blend traditional with modern fashioning stones and beads of all colors, silver, bronze, leather, ebony, and pearls into vibrant designs that embellish the glow of assorted skin tones.With her team of artisans, Gologo created seven collections that are a feast for the eye. Exploding with vivid colors and sleek, geometric shapes, her flowing strands of beads possess a regal type of elegance and beauty
AVIF provides a step by step how-to on building fuel cells with "...a mixture of crushed beer cans, and other household aluminium...The battery is made using plastic pipe and standard parts (apart from the cathode)..."
The battery below uses "...waste aluminium to produce about 10 Watts and it can power a small light, your mobile phone or other USB device, it can charge up 4 'AA' cells and it can be connected to other TP3s to stack up the power for fridges, pumps etc.This battery runs as long as you have waste aluminium and that means the energy is free..."
Who knew? Design Scientista on the origins of the Damask Rose, a homage to the Egyptian revolution and the luscious pastries you can flavor with it:
If you're treated to an extra large, luscious bouquet of especially fragrant roses this Valentine's Day, pause for a moment, softly burrow your nose into those irresistibly luxurious petals, and draw a long, slow breath. What do you smell? Clover? Nasturtium? Linseed? What you may be smelling is the fiery damask of Africa.
With its ideal climate and altitude, Mt. Kenya is considered one of the most ideal locations in the world for cultivating premium roses. With their large, lavish velvety heads (some are over 5" across!) and enthralling fruity, woodsy & tobacco-like fragrances, one has to wonder if the very winds of Mt. Kenya grow lovesick with these perfuming the air...[continue reading]
Sometimes, you just want to ask questions from someone who understands your language, just like you! Before now we have depended mostly on foreign tech forum sites to get answers to our tech questions. Imagine writing a code and you need to fix a bug, you usually search through the net to get it. With Codenigeria.com, you can connect with other Nigeria coders to get answer to your programming questions.Developed by Silas Jesufemi Olatayo, one of Nigeria’s brightest programmers. The goal is to help other programmers get help as fast as possible from people close to them and that have same (as the case may be) challenges as theirs.
"I love the old phones. The new ones are not as well made and won't be working 80 years from now," the second-generation repairman said.
But when asked if they feel they are helping Egypt's environment by reusingelectronicparts, Farouk and the other repairmen seem confused by the question. For them, their business is all about money — not cutting back on landfill waste.
Salah el Haggar, a mechanical engineer at the American University in Cairo, said poverty drives the developing world's repair industry. In Egypt, for example, more than 20 percent of the country's 76.5 million people live under the poverty line, according to the World Bank.
I was in Lamu recently and came across this man who was making a boat out of plastic bottles and old slippers. He was not yet finished with it yet but I took the few photos of the product that I could.He says that he collects plastic water bottles that the tourists throw on the beach. He also wakes up early in the morning to collect bottles washed ashore from the sea. With these he has constructed the (in his own words, “first in its kind”) boat.He water-proofs it by sealing the gaps with used slippers collected in the very same way. Then boils tar in order to glue the components all together.
In an unexpected move, John made an on-the-fly design mod to put the pole behind the bracket and the box on the front, cutting down the materials list and solving a tension problem with the pole attachments. John also pounded the pavement to cobble together an effective power backup out of computer parts, solarcharge controllers and UPS batteries. Between the two of them, they created a beautifuly integrated, reasonably priced installation:
An event that brought together three leading entrepreneurs with views on the increasing availability of 3D printers and other small scale manufacturing technology.
...convinced that Americans have a deep-rooted urge to make things with their hands, and that with the right tools, a significant minority could turn their basement-shop hobbies into real businesses. Which is why he believes that there’s a place in every major city for a fully tricked-out machine shop that functions on the Gold’s Gym model—that is, charging a flat monthly fee in return for unlimited access to TechShop’s space and equipment.
In addition the Fabaloo folks talk through how you can outsource your personal manufacturing using a Ponoko type service:
Ponoko Manufactured case for a MIDI Interface box
Personal manufacturing doesn't have to take place on your premises using your own equipment. It can be outsourced to Ponoko, the personal manufacturing company. Ponoko posted a very interesting story of one of their users who managed to bootstrap his way to a cool USD$80,000 - starting from nothing!...[continue reading]
We also take a look at a couple of Make magazine articles on DIY Labs:
...here are lots of reasons why a fully portable lab might be worth considering: a lack of workspace in your house, maintaining continuity through a move, hauling your toolset to a client site, conjuring a nomadic hackerspace community that can coalesce around projects, "bugging out" without losing effectiveness, creating a private shop without construction legalities... or just because it's efficient, cool, and away from distractions.
Lawrence Schembri is building this amazing home science lab using lots of recycled materials, vintage chemistry sets, and other thrift scores, plus a lot of clever kludging. Really inspiring stuff. Who'd ever think to turn furniture casters into petri dishes?
Last year, at the launch of the iHub in Nairobi, Bill Zimmerman (ActivSpaces), Jon Gosier (Hive Colab), Erik Hersman (iHub), Bart Lacroix (1% Club) and myself came together to discuss the emergence of technology incubators on the continent. Especially this idea that the labs we see coming online are often independent initiatives i.e. either a single entrepreneur or small group of entrepreneurs coming together to form an open collaboration space for the local tech community.
From our discussions it was made clear that there was not only a need to start working more together but to see how we can support new iniatives just starting out. And at the same time coming to the realization that the entrepreneurs with the best ideas still need support if they are going to successfully transition to the market. These are some of the initial motivations that have been transformed into the network organization Afrilabs. We have two primary activities where on one side we are looking to support the development of healthy/sustainable labs and on the other we seek to support the most promising entrepreneurs ready to escape their walls.
Alloy Steel Castings a part of the EAFW group, is a steel foundry and machine shop established to cater for the growing demand for both machined and as-cast steel castings in the global market...[continue reading]
Low voltage network construction 415/240v
Service connections/meter installation Street lighting
Industrial wiring and installation
Commercial wiring
Domestic wiring
Aframomum melegutta also called Grains of Paradise (GOP) is gradually remerging and sneaking itself back onto dinner tables and the ingredient shelves of restaurants and food factories. Steeped in a rich and partly embellished historical background, Aframomum melegutta is a spice native to tropical West Africa. Part of the West African coast especially from Buchanan to Harper in Liberia was named the ‘Grains Coast’ due to the high availability GOP in this area.
FansConnecOnline on BlackBerry. A Blackberry ap[ version of the social utility website that seeks to connect football fans with friends and other fans. Solu. An app that introduces lists to sms users. First time of sms, the users can send information in list format. Where You Dey. innovative local search app tailored for the Nigerian Telecoms market. Ozii. one shopping and ordering app that is used for customers and order management for the merchants and Shopping Malls. Adugbo. An application to search and promote local businesses.
Bino and Fino, two cartoon characters we hope children of West African origin will come to know and love. To be honest, even though this is a Nigerian based project, we want children from all over the world to see the cartoon. Bino & Fino is an animation series driven by education, entertainment and the Nigerian cultural mix aimed at pre-school and kindergarten children.
An anthocyanin purple tea variety that could earn farmers three to four times more than green tea has been developed by experts at the Tea Research Foundation of Kenya (TRFK). The new clone, TRFK306/1, is drought and frost resistant, high yielding and will grow in similar weather conditions as the green tea species. The purple species, the first of its kind in Kenya, has taken 25 years to develop.
The Ghana Bean Company aims to provide world-class chocolate delights to indulge the senses. A limited liability company run by founder-chocolatier Lucy Afua Akiti, it now markets to an exclusive clientele of specialty shops, and makes the rest of its products to order.
How she started:
Lucy learnt the scientific art of making chocolate from a master Austrian chocolatier sometime during her 20 year stint in Austria, where her husband was working for the UN and she was teaching at the Vienna International School in Austria. Her mentor was the father of a renowned pastrychef to whom she confided her interest in creating the edible treats. And once she was confident in her skill, she started making chocolate gifts for friends in Austria…and the word spread.
