I found a story about a young Malawian who had built a windmill from scratch to help power the lights in his rural home. When I showed up at TED Global in Arusha in June, I had no idea that I would meet him. At that point, he hadn’t been introduced to the larger TED community, so I was this lone excited voice squawking about how thrilled I was to meet him.
2 Days later, William Kamkwamba was introduced to the TED community on stage:
David Mwangi has run a roadside tree and plant nursery outside of Nairobi for four years. In Kenya, you have to work around the two seasons (unlike the 4 in the West). The rainy season where everything is fine, and the dry season where your plants will likely die. This gets even worse when a drought happens.
David had the idea to dig a ditch down the side of the road and channel that into two 2-meter deep water catchments. The water is used to support the plants during the dry season and he never runs out of water, even during a drought. He has also stocked the pulls with fish (Tilapia), that he and his workers eat. A third byproduct is that the rain water being diverted doesn’t further erode that part of the road.
It’s a lesson in simplicity married with low-tech ingenuity coming together for increased business profitability.
Here’s a short video, where one of my friends translates for David:
More pictures available at the Flickr AfriGadget group.
If you have any stories or pictures of African innovations and ingenuity, please contact us.
Phillip Isohe is a metal fabricator in the jua kali, non-traditional industrial sector, in Kenya. In his spare time he builds models of airplanes and buses. This seems to be an extension of what many of us did while growing up in Africa - building wire, or tin can, cars. What’s most interesting is the excruciating attention to detail that he puts into each one. In fact, they each have motors with working lights, steering, engine and interiors.
Phillip had just sold one of his buses, so the only other one I have a picture of is only half-built (picture). However, he did have a finished and working model airplane. It was amazing to see how each piece, engine included, was built from scratch. It’s not every day that you see this kind of detail work on hobbies, no matter where you are in the world.
The models take him 30 days to make and goes for about 25,000/= ($370). That’s likely just his “starting price” though, and they probably sell for a good deal less when he really wants to move it.
Inspiring, innovative and representative of what Africa’s future holds.
William Kamkwamba is a 19 year old Malawian who built his first windmill at 14. Here he is, pictured just this last week doing some work on his windmill near his home.
The propellers are made of plastic pipes supported by sticks to that they should not bend when the wind is strong and placed almost vertical to the direction the winds is coming.
Unlike in most windmills where the propellers directly turn the spindle connected to the turbines directly, William added pulleys to his machine to increase speed thereby generating more energy.
There are three pulleys and the last is connected to a bicycle wheel. When this wheel turns it turns a dynamo which in turn generates electricity.
Read his blog for inspiring stories about making things work in rural Africa!
The last couple weeks have found myself, and a couple other AfriGadget team bloggers (1, 2, 3), traipsing across East Africa on our way to and from TEDGlobal. We were able to source a few really good stories that you’ll see coming online in the next couple of weeks.
Some of the AfriGadget bloggers
While at TEDGlobal, I had the chance to talk on stage about African ingenuity and innovation at the most micro level. Needless to say, it was exhilarating. I gave examples of the stories we’ve published here over the last year. It was a lot of fun and I think people enjoyed it.
Of course, this high-flying adventure couldn’t all go smoothly. In fact, on Thursday, the last day of TEDGlobal and the day that some pretty big sites linked to us, our web host was hacked and we went down in flames. I was off to Uganda and had a terrible connection, and it wasn’t until today that I’ve been able to fix things.
So, thanks for your patience in all of this, and thanks for reading! We’ve got some pretty exciting ideas about this next year and will keep you informed as they happen.
[update: here's a short audio slideshow of what I think I said...]
Being on the ground in Nairobi makes it a little easier to find good AfriGadget stories. I took a walk down Ngong road, an area with a lot of shadetree mechanics, wood carvers and metal fabricators. The first place I stopped at had a home made welding machine.
Simon, the shop owner, showed me a couple of the machines and gave a video tour of how it works. He’s a prime example how an entrepreneur in Africa will figure out ingenious solutions to meet local market demands. The welders sell for around 14,000 Kenya Shillings (just over $200), but fabrication costs only a small fraction of that.
Below is the video and some pictures. (Another video will be uploaded later, connection speed issues preclude me uploading another one right now).
A small company in Madagascar is working to get electricity to rural areas of the island. This video shows them taking the solar panels around in a van to show people how it works and educate the children on solar power. It’s an interesting video, especially near the end where Bill hooks up his computer to the internet through a satellite connection at night - all powered by the solar panel’s stored energy.
4 brothers in Western Kenya have begun solving water problems by creating waterpump windmills out of old bicycle parts and roofing materials. They have created 30 of them and are making good money doing it. This is another story of Africans solving their own problems using local materials:
The four Ututu brothers had inherited a large area of fertile farmland, which had been terraced by their father in the late 1950s. Despite this resource, they were experiencing problems because they lacked water both for drinking (meaning wasted time, fetching water from 15 km away in the dry season) and for irrigation (thus low yields from the meagre rainfall).
Most African children are forced to create their own toys from scratch. Below are some samplings of what they make with what’s available. Old tire inner-tubes, soda cans, mud, bailing wire and sticks are just a few of the materials used to create imaginative toys.
In just about every country in Africa you’ll find the boys making cars, motorcycles and airplanes out of tin cans and bailing wire:
In Southern Sudan children use mud to create animals to play with. Below is a picture of a Cape Buffalo:
Another great picture and story from Mark Steudal who sends this image and description:
This is a motorized bicycle, made in Kisumu, Kenya and purchased in Kakemega. They hold about 2 liters of petrol and can get theoretically around 50 km a liter. They cost around 7,000 Kenyan shillings. To start the bicycle you start pedaling manually, then you flip a switch on the left handle that starts the engine. Then you have a normal motorcycle throttle control on the right side.
[Note: Send in your pictures and stories showing African ingenuity using our Contact Form.]
