AfriGadget

I recently had a chance to conduct an email interview with Simon Mwacharo, an entrepreneur based in Nairobi, Kenya who a great example of what George Ayitteh has so aptly described as “The Cheetah Generation”.

Simon owns and runs CraftSkills, a small business based in Nairobi, Kenya that focuses on designing and building self-sustaining renewable energy projects in places not accessible to the electric grid. Craftskills had to date undertaken challenging projects in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Cameroon and Rwanda among other places. Simon, whom AfriGadget first got to meet last summer at TED Global in Arusha, Tanzania, graciously agreed to conduct an email interview with AfriGadget.

AfriGadget: Could you tell us when and how Craft Skills got into the business of renewable energy in East Africa and the inspiration behind the organization?

Simon: CRAFTSKILLS was found in the year 2000 by myself. I was inspired by a challenge from my rural home where we have not had power for the last 40 plus years since [Kenya’s] independence [in 1963]. I come from a hill side village in Sagalla, Taita Hills in Coast Province where we receive quite some strong wind from the Nyika Plateau. This wind passes through without being tapped and sometimes our roofs can not stand in its way.

I started talking to people about wind turbines and how I can get an affordable one which I can make and produce for other needy people. When darkness falls in these villages plus the fog it is virtually impossible to travel the terrain at night.

AfriGadget: Tell us a little about the people behind Craft Skills and the staff who work for the organization.

Simon: I started with two workers. I could not afford to hire trained people so I decided to train myself first then train my two boys. Then I got a friend who repairs radios and TVs in Kibera to help me design and put together a charge controller.

Now we have a team of 20 people and other partners out there in the field with their staff totaling 50. We have technicians, welders fitters, fiberglass experts and engineers and sales people.

AfriGadget: What is the typical profile of a Craft Skills project? Who is your typical client and how are the projects typically executed?

Simon: Most of our clients are not the owners of the projects we put up. They benefit from the battery charging services in the wind/solar sites we put up with our partners. The low income earners who cannot afford grid power or are in settlements where grid power is unavailable. We take both to do the sites ourselves involving the people on the ground as partners. Others are home owners who have invested a lot on building good homes in non grid areas – these put up turbines for their own use like lighting, and pumping water from wells and boreholes. The other segment is the business people I market areas where there is no grid who put up turbines to run charging centres and sell power to other shops or run their off-grid businesses like lodges and hotels, schools and other institutions.

AfriGadget: Can you share with our readers some of the challenges that Craft Skills faces in executing your projects?

Simon: We have faced cultural challenges where we cannot put a turbine on the most ideal site due to beliefs on such sites hence we have to educate the citizens to allow us to do so or redesign the project and relocate. Another is the financial capability of the citizens we find in these off grid areas.

[As a result of this] we have designed low power product (battery bundles and LED lights) to reach them so that they can be counted as beneficiaries of this new technology.

AfriGadget: Why renewable energy? What is the rationale behind Craft Skills’ exclusive focus on projects that produce energy from renewable sources.

Simon: We were looking for something which is affordable and sustainable and cuts across the economic sectors. Solar was proving to be more expensive, delicate, sophisticated and easily stolen when installed on ones home. We needed to sell people more power at a cheaper rate hence wind was the best candidate.

Wind is everywhere just like solar – one needs to get the right spot to put the turbine as high as they can. Its 24 hrs (Day and Night) and we found a cheap way we could make our turbines take advantage of low wind situations with the multi-pole generator, hollow blades for the propeller, with 90 per cent locally available materials making our technology the best application for this region.

AfriGadget: Which would you say has been the most satisfying/gratifying project that you have been involved with at Craft Skills? What was so special to you about this particular project?

Simon: The Chifiri water pan project to me is most gratifying. This settlement is all arid land pastoral community. The demand for water for drinking washing and watering the thousands of livestock is enormous.

Our turbine provided a cheaper solution for water and lighting the “manyattas” around the water pan. The contractor on the ground is excellent on his construction of the earth dams. His design impressed me that water was going to be available for over 6 months instead of the normal 4 months after the rainy seasons. He made sure the dams were well compacted and fenced to avoid animals hoofing inside the dam – increasing the rate of percolation and lose of water in the ground. Water is only available at the kiosks which are piped and placed near the settlements. The project provides water troughs for the animals to drink from and bathrooms for the people to clean themselves in. Within the fenced dam there is an armed home guard or caretaker manning the place with a security light up the tower hoisting the turbine.

Simon was also interviewed by Juliana Chebet aka AfroMusing, a Senior Editor at AfriGadget on CraftSkills. You can find the video at this link.

The BBC is running a story on a young inventor, 23-year old Daniel Sheridan, who has designed a teeter-totter (see-saw) that can be used to power school classrooms in Africa. His ultimate goal is to see a whole playground of energy-creating equipment.

“The current need for electricity in sub-Saharan Africa is staggering. Without power development is extremely difficult. The potential for this product is huge and the design could be of benefit to numerous communities in Africa and beyond.”

The idea came about after travels to East Africa, where he taught at a school and was inspired by the students. Daniel developed the see-saw power design as part of his final year at Coventry University. He has calculated that five to 10 minutes use on the see-saw could generate enough electricity to light a classroom for an evening.

Some Thoughts
What would be more interesting would be to see this idea built out with local supplies, as Daniel is going to be doing soon in Uganda. Then, with the knowledge learned there, see if it could fall into the same model of micro-entrepreneurial devices that we see with the KickStart water pumps. Speaking of which, this also reminds me of the PlayPumps idea, which also has a lot of potential.

Daniel states, “The unique selling point of this product is that it is not intended as a profit-making design.” I can only hope that he means this as profit for him. Profit making on the ground by Africans of this type of design could be crucial for its long-term success.

We hope you enjoy these pictures of toys from Kenya and Ghana. They are a sampling of the pictures on the AfriGadget flickr group. The materials used to make these toys are scrap metal, tins, wire, and pieces of leather.

Wire Bikes

Ghana
Colorful bikes

Spray can wheels

Red Dynamo

Wire Motor Bike from Kenya

Cars and Tractor

Tin Cars from Ghana

From Kenya:
Wire Landrover

Wire Tractor

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.

Over the weeks since the first post we did on Dr. Cedrick Ngalande’s inexpensive power source for Africa, we’ve been emailing back and forth about his invention. Yesterday, he sent me a link to a video of his device on YouTube.

“The rotor moves slowly most of the times but does pick up at certain intervals. This process continues for many hours. Since the rotor is quite heavy (and hence more inertia) a small geared DC motor can be connected to the rotor to generate power for cell phones, $100 laptops, and other things in Africa. People can leave this thing to charge their phones/$100 laptops overnight.”

Read the rest of this entry »

This is a continuation of Erik’s post on African Modular machines.

The video below shows how the machines are used in wood workshops to make design cutouts, carve out pieces for furniture and to split planks of wood. It is essentially the same machine pieces, motor, pulleys and frame, just customized for different uses. The customization is done in a small industry locally known as Jua Kali or Gikomba, where entrepreneurs like Mr. John Chege purchase them for use in small workshops like this.

When playing the video, please mute it, there is lots of noise from the machines.

Read the rest of this entry »

Victor Kaonga points us to Dr. Cedrick Ngalande, a Malawian, who has built a prototype power source made specifically for Africa. It generates power using sugar and yeast for up to 8 hours at a time.

Mobile phones are big in Africa, however it’s a real challenge to power them. How about night time electrical lighting, rather than paraffin lamps. Of course, in Africa we can think of all types of applications that this device could be used for.

This gadget will be very ideal to developing countries like Africa where electricity is scarce. As you know, the growth of cell phone is fastest in Africa. The problem most Africans have is that they cannot charge those cell phones due to lack of electricity. Some have to walk long distances just to charge cell phones. My invention will make it easy for these people to charge their cell phones. Also, this generator can be used to charge $100 computers which are being introduced in Africa. It can also be used to charge or operate medical devices in rural Africa.

On a side note, I love seeing inventions made by Africans for Africans. It’s only by living and being a part of the everyday life that you get past the surface issues and start to really understand the real problems to be overcome. Personally, I love this story; it’s ingenious and African - just what we like here on AfriGadget!

If you have any stories, pictures or videos of ingenious African solutions, send them to us!

(hat tip: Soyapi)

There’s a really interesting story about a man in Kenya who claims to have created a plane from scratch.

Using a Volkswagen beetle engine, and aluminium sheets for the body, Mr Gachamba made a single seater plane.

He tested it out at an airstrip in Nyeri and sure enough, it took off. Caught up in the excitement of the minute, he decided to fly to his home in Mathira.

A few minutes into the ride, he noticed the engine was overheating. He decided to turn and in the process the low flying plane struck a tree top and crash landed. He was injured in the leg and has had a limp since.

(Read the rest of the article)

I’d love to see pictures of this plane, though I’m doubtful of there being any as this happened in the 70’s. Either way, a fun story. Right now he’s building his own Hummer from an old Datsun engine and “wheelbarrows, wheelchairs, metal pipes and other vehicle accessories”. At 75 years old he’s not slowing down at all!

Yahoo! News (among other sources) carries a story from October 21st about Mubarak Muhammad Abdullahi of the Kano Plains of Nigeria who has built a working helicopter over the last 8 months using scrap aluminum and parts from a Honda Civic, an old Toyota and from the remains of a crashed Boeing 747.

This inventor has had no formal training in flying and his helicopter has never flown higher than 7 feet of the ground. In an interview, he talks about how the machine works:

“You start it, allow it to run for a minute or two and you then shift the accelerator forward and the propeller on top begins to spin. The further you shift the accelerator the faster it goes and once you reach 300 rmp you press the joystick and it takes off,”

Mubarak is ambitious however and has embarked on a new project to build a better helicopter that will be able to make 3 hour flights. He hopes to get support for his project from the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) and other Nigerian government bodies.

The HAPV (Advertised as HAPPY) is a twist on the ‘horse and buggy’ mode of transportation, making this a donkey, cart, solar panel on a canopy FUV (Farm Utility Vehicle) that is quite ingenious and absolutely AfriGadget. A donkey drawn carriage is commonplace in many countries in Africa, and this retrofit by the organization Water and Wheel adds more functionality and utility especially suited for rural Africa.

Fitted with a solar panel that charges a 12 volt battery under the driver’s seat, the “HAPPY” becomes an independent, sustainable source of energy that powers cell phone connectivity, front and rear emergency lights and a small neon tube at night. Add a water filtration system, and the “HAPPY” doubles as a multi functional mobile business unit, that can empower an entrepreneurial owner, to generate income from it as a fresh water outlet, a mobile phone kiosk or a spaza shop – even after dark.

Read more about it here.

(Hat tip Mweshi)

Note: Erik Hersman (White African) was interviewed a few minutes ago on BBC, a podcast will be available in a day or two and we will be sure to share it here (link).