AfriGadget: the story behind the stories.

What does it take, out there in the field, to get an AfriGadget story?

Well, this video that I took back in the summer of 2007 shows Hash (aka WhiteAfrican) hard at work getting the Africa’s Modular Machines piece that went up in AfriGadget last November. Yes, the sound quality and camera work are atrocious but sometimes, opportunity just presents itself.

I am happy to report that as you can see, he was busy bringing Firefox to the people as he did this.

Simpsons Carvings from Kenya

This one is not exactly AfriGadget, more like an AfriToy, but we love the story nonetheless. The video reporter Ruud Elmendorp visited the small village of Tabaaka, near Kakamega, in western province Kenya. Below is a video showing the master carvers at work, creating soapstone figures of The Simpsons characters. The carvings are available for online purchase through the CraftVillage website. Please click on the image below to view the video.

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Al-Jazeera also covered the story last year, focusing on the economic boost of the Simpsons movie on the village, as it saw an increase in the number of orders for the carvings. It is the confluence of popular culture and African handicraft that we particularly enjoyed when it came to this story. If we had our way we would have soapstone carvings of Strongbad! One day.

PS: AfriGadget will have a monthly feature on The World Technology Podcast, which you can subscribe to here. The first issue is now posted. Many thanks to Clark Boyd, the AfriGadget team is quite excited about this.

The Bamboo Bike project

The Bamboo Bike, an endeavour that aims at building bicycles in a sustainable fashion using bamboo as the primary construction material, is a joint project run by Craig Calfree of Calfree Design, a high tech bicycle design firm based in California and The Earth Institute at Columbia University.

The bicycle is the primary mode of transport in Africa and it is used for everything from personal transportation to moving medicine and the sick to hospital. Sadly, the design used in most of Africa has not changed for the last 40 years to take into account the different ways in which the bicycle is used. In fact, most bikes in use in most of Africa today are based on a colonial British design tailored to individuals travelling short distances on smooth roads.

Bamboo Bicycle Project - Bike Assembly  Bamboo Bicycle Project - The Bamboo Bike

While making bike frames based on bamboo is not a new idea, most bamboo frame designs simply use bamboo for construction material in a traditional bike frame design. Leveraging the unique properties of bamboo such as its strength and flexibility to meet the specific needs of populations local to various parts of Africa is one of the primary rationale behind the Bamboo Bike project.

The team working on the Bamboo Bike project in the US, Ghana and Kenya among other locations have a interesting blog (last updated in the summer of 2007) that chronicles the struggles of the project team while on site in Africa.

Project gear including Bamboo Bikes and clothing is available on the Bamboo Bike and Calfree Design websites.

Bamboo Bicycle Project - A Ghanian Village Elder on the Bamboo bike  Craig Calfree and the Bamboo Bicycle Project