Zambikes is a project that retrofits bicycles by adding a trailer. This is especially useful in rural Zambia (and other parts of Africa) where there aren’t many cars to get the sick to hospital, much less an ambulance.
Watch how the ‘Zambulance’ retrofit is made…
The ‘ZamCart’
A multipurpose trailer
Interestingly, the Zambike project sells and outfits bikes under the local brand name of ‘Amaka Sana’, the Bemba word for ‘very strong’ .
Just last week two African inventors won recognition for inventions that involved scrap, bicycles and mobile phones.
William Kamkwamba grew up as a farmer in Malawi, at the age of just 14, he had built his own wind generator.
During a drought his families fortunes collapsed and he spent his time in libraries reading and discovering about wind energy. He found components for his invention in a scrap yard; a tractor fan, shock absorber, PVC pipes and a bicycle frame.
When his prototype was able to run four bulbs people arrived to charge their mobile phone. William has just appeared on TED Global conference in Oxford this week to the conference to tell the audience how he did this.
Another inventor has already appeared on Afrigadjet and has just been discovered by the BBC. Pascal Katana, 22 who with Jeremiah Murimi, 24, has gone beyond fish and has invented a dynamo-powered “smart charger” to help people without electricity in rural areas to charge their cell phones. The system costs $4.50 and it takes an hour to fully charge a cell phone.
These two young men developed the idea during summer break. Wish I had so much energy in my holiday. These guys should be at Maker Faire in Ghana this August.
Local school grounds in Sudan are a breeding pool for home grown games. The most popular seems to use any pole available, including those against walls, string & a soda bottle filled with rocks and dirt. Voila, you have a tetherball game at hand. About the only thing not found just laying around is the string and oddly enough that’s what needs to be replaced often, as can be seen by the photo with the variations in colored string.
[Editors note: these pictures were taken during a sand storm]
Another home grown game seems to bear some resemblance to cricket. They throw a small rubber ball at another person who tries to kick it. If they are successful they run between two pre-determined locations, stacking rocks/stones/bricks at each point, until the other team can return the ball to try and hit them with it.
Oddly enough, it seems volleyball is another popular sport. I know of at least four schools which have installed volleyball nets
File this contribution from South Africa into the “odd, yet interesting file”:
“What to do when you have a bath tub, but actually want to take a shower? Easy, just use whatever office materials you can find to make your own shower. Find a long rod, balance it on top of a door and the burglar bars. Attach a sheet of plastic, using office clips. Voila, you have a shower curtain. Now we want to use both the cold and warm water taps, so using pipes and ropes to hold them in place, both sources are fed to the main pipe leading up to the shower head. The shower head is attached to a shelf bracket using oh-so-useful cable ties.”
Pascal Katana, a Fourth Year student at the Department of Electrical and Information Engineering at the University of Nairobi, Kenya, developed an electronic device that ‘automates’ fishing. The trap employs amplification of the sound made by fish while feeding. The acoustic signals are radiated and attract other fish who head toward the direction of the source thinking there is food there.
Once a good catch is detected by a net weighing mechanism, it triggers a GPRS/GSM device attatched to the system and the fisherman gets a call/sms informing him that his catch is ready. Pascal is in the process of developing a by-catch control system which will ensure that his contraption doesn’t cause overfishing.
2000 djembe drums were created from 20 tons of plastic trash. “La Victoire sur les Sachets” is a short video showing their “victory over the plastic bags”.
Simon has hardwired a way to open and lock his door remotely via his phone, as well as get tea brewing and other manual and remote tasks. The video speaks for itself, so I’m not going to say anything other than to link you to my past thoughts on challenges for tech entrepreneurs in Africa.
