A Little Housekeeping at AfriGadget

AfriGadget LogoFirst 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.

Author: Erik Hersman

Erik is the owner of White African, a blog about technology and Africa. He is the co-founder of Zangu, a new web and mobile phone application that he hopes will change communication in Africa. AfriGadget is another web project of his, not that he doesn't have enough of those already...

10 thoughts on “A Little Housekeeping at AfriGadget”

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  3. Hello, Erik. I’ve been an interested reader for some months, now; you run a great blog.

    I’ll be in the the Congo for six weeks, shortly, installing a hospital management system for a large hospital in a town called Goma (details: http://mindtangle.net/2007/08/16/congo-line/)

    While I’m there, I’ll be looking around for local makers who are doing interesting things, and will write them up. If you’re interested in this content, send me an email. It’s an interest of mine, as I work for Instructables, a site where people gather to show off their inventions and creations. Check this group of makers, for example: http://www.instructables.com/group/fullbellyproject/

    Cheers!

  4. Love the idea of allowing investment in the entrepreneurs. About half of the links I forward to people recently have been afrigadget – I just love the low profile inventiveness and ingenuity. Good luck with the changes.

  5. Hash, please think how our Minciu Sodas laboratory http://www.ms.lt for independent thinkers might work with you and your inventors. We’re very strong in Africa and our participants have benefited from small amounts of work and travel that we have organized. We’ve been blessed by great energy from Africa for our values based approach. Also, we’re developing a USB Flash Drive Editor especially for including Africans with marginal Internet access so they could read and write emails away from a computer or even electricity. http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?FlashDriveEditor I invite you and all to join our working group Mendenyo (Men without food) led by Samwel Kongere (in Rusinga Island, Kenya) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mendenyo/ where we are working on this.

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