AfriGadget

In Africa bicycle repair men can be found everywhere, from under a tree to in the local vegetable market, one of the best places to find African innovations.

At the Karen market I met the charismatic Mohammed Makokha who proudly showed me two of his home made gadgets that are critical for his business.

I’ve obviously been wasting my money in the bicycle stores.

It’s no secret that Kenya’s rivers are running dry as a result of forest destruction and environmental degradation which has led to a season of blackouts in the capital city Nairobi.

Typical of the ingenious people of Nairobi one street vendor has cashed in on the crisis with this wonderful gadget which he markets as

“Perfect for Nairobi black out”

As you can see I could actually read by the light of this lamp which is made from a used tin can, some pieces of wire to make the connections

And the battery compartment is ingeniously crafted from a circle cut from a retired flip flop.

I love my juakali lamp and everyone that I know  in Nairobi needs one of these lamps. Everything about it is so true to the juakali spirit – hand crafted using colourful recycled tins, and designed for a real purpose with a handle so you can move it around from room to room or hang it up. The vendor tried to sell it to me for Ksh 350 but we settled on Ksh 200 (about $2.50) though I’m sure he would have gone cheaper but the traffic was moving and I had to go.

If you want one visit the Nyayo stadium roundabout.  They stood out amongst the chinese junk that vendors are selling you could practically kit out your house from the junk on sale there. Here’s a short list of what I saw during my 30 minute traffic hold up:

Pens, hats, footballs, blow up spiderman (who needs one of these?), peanuts wrapped in newspaper cones,

smelly car things, driveres licence holding cases, scarves, giant maps, Kenya flags, apples, kits (spiderman kites),

Nike shorts, cowboy hats, socks, oanges, backpacks, cheap watches, key chains knives, olympic medals (yes I wanted one of those!),

knee length shorts for guys who sag, hazard ttriangles, cables to cack your car, name tags for meetings, torches, window wipers (!),

car mats, pears, plumbs, tiny folding chairs for children (or Chinese people?), vehicle number plates, fire extinguishers, stickers,

Enormous framed pictures of furry cats and snow leopards (I can just see one of these this in my house), bananas and bandanas, plastic lunch boxes, pillows and cussions, a huge variety of stuffed toys,

posters with Jesus’ sayings, polo shirts, stearing wheel covers, spanners, screw drivers and of course my favourite – juakali lamps.

Nairobi never fails to impress. I love it. What else have you seen on sale in the Nairobi streets?

First Peaks

The Ministry of Higher Education and Technology has organized a Robot Contest (RoboCon), between Kenyan Universities and middle level colleges. The regional competition is taking place today at the Kenya Polytechnic. Here are the first looks at the Robots from institutions taking part in the competition.

Some video will come soon…

For more information on RoboCon click here.

I was in Lamu in June and came upon a metal workshop tucked away behind the front row of buildings on the main path from Lamu Town to Shela. Inside were two blacksmiths, Adam Marabu and Abdul Ahmed, working diligently at creating a new anchor. What caught my eye though, was the bellows. They had taken old cement bags and hooked them up to metal pipes in the floor that fed air into the make-shift furnace.

Here’s a short video with some footage of them at work:

Lamu Cement-bag Bellows (AfriGadget) from WhiteAfrican on Vimeo.

One of my favorite stories on AfriGadget was the other unique bellows I found, this time in Nairobi, made out of an old bicycle. Both of these go examples go to show what can be done with very little. It’s about improvising what you have and overcoming a challenge.

Adam and Abdul make all types of items, but they told me that their main products are anchors, which range from small to large (2000-5000/= or $26-65) and, chisels and coconut shellers. They create a lot of the small metal pieces on the local dhows, and also make doors and window frames for the homes in the town. Really, they can make just about anything that you desire, like experienced metal workers anywhere in the world. What’s amazing is what they do it with.

After all these fascinating AfriGadgets from Maker Faire Africa, here’s another invention as seen by our friend Cedric Kalonji, a Congolese journalist in Kinshasa (D.R.C.):

For the lack of a cheap power supply in the City of Kinshasa, smart mechanics came up with this little stove that speeds up combustion by adding a little electric fan (hidden inside this tube that looks like being part of a flat spring). The fan itself is powered by (Chinese!) batteries and with the burning of charcoal, this quick stove obviously isn’t the greenest solution. But it works and does the job for those who will otherwise have no alternative.

Cedric also mentions on his blog post that it’s difficult to identify the inventor of this device. A perfect example of how low-cost technology easily gets adopted and/or modified (and why intellectual property rights are still a major issue in many places).

Honey is one of the most valuable products of the drylands of Africa. It can be obtained by following a little bird called a honey guide to a bees nest in a tree, whereupon one raids the hive. Or bees can be farmed…in most places a bee keeper simply hollows out logs to make perfectly acceptable hives for local consumption. for commercial purposes however, Langstroth hives are universally thought to be superior to the traditional log hives found in Africa – the box shape make them easy to stack and move around,  and the movable frames guide bees to build combs in an organized manner making comb extraction easy. These hives also have a queen excluder, a mesh grid, usually made of wire or plastic, sized such that worker bees can pass through but the bigger queens cant. This keeps the queen from laying eggs in the honey combs called supers leading to cleaner honey. There are so many NGO’s, GOs and religious Orgs introducing these bright yellow langstroth hives across the Kenyan landscape.They don’t always catch on though – in rural areas people still prefer the logs…

Traditional log hives are hollowed out logs usually cut from specific tree species with the permission of the local chief. They are hung high in trees and the inside is rubbed with leaves of plants that attract bees – a practice that has been going on for eons. The bees enter the hives through a tiny hole and build their combs willy nilly throughout the space, it’s inefficient and the honey is of a lower quality as the larvae are all mixed up with the honey combs. Not very good for a business approach… or should I say Beesness?.

Logic would suggest that the Langstroth hives which produce cleaner honey and they save trees should be favoured right? Wrong! These modern hives are produced by experts in cities and cost a good $100 – far beyond the reach of anyone living in rural Kenya. It’s also rumoured that these hives are easily broken into by honey badgers, over heat in the dry climate of north Kenya driving bees away, and are expensive to maintain. On a personal note, I for one, find them extremely ugly too.

One bee keeping cooperative in Bogoria has figured out a cunning way of modifying traditional log hives to produce more honey. A bee excluder is made using coffee mesh.

Symon demonstrated how beeswax tracks are laid down to guide the bees where to build their combs in neat lines. Cost? One third of the Langstroth hive.

The honey is collected at night by naked men (yes totally naked …) they say that this prevents one from getting bees stuck in your clothing… I asked about the possibility of getting stung in sensitive places, they said the bees were far too civilized for that…but yes, people had fallen from the trees and been found comatose and butt naked at the tree base…

Raw honey with comb is sold to the local cooperative where wax is separated from honey. The machine is another jua kali item bought in a workshop in Nairobi.

Bees are smoked out of the hive using a home made smoker.

Production by 40 bee keepers was 8 tons last year, each Kg of raw honey was bought by the cooperative for Ksh 80 ($1), and sold on raw at Ksh 100, or processed and honey sold at Ksh 600 per kg ($8).

8 tons of raw honey were collected in 2008 – this is valued at Ksh640,000 for the 40 bee keepers in the business.

The wax is not wasted but converted into candles which sell for Ksh 10 each ($ 0.12).

Using a jua kali gadget for making candles, comprising a string, a piece of conduit pipe and two beer caps….ingenious!

Producing the sweetest smelling cheapest candles I’ve ever used. They claim they burn much longer than paraffin candles. Besides they smell delicious

Some sweet facts

· The dry lands of Kenya are the important honey producing districts in Kenya – the semi arid climate, diversity of flowering plants and easy access to fresh water makes it perfect for bees. Kenya is the fourth largest producer of honey in Africa 22,000 tons, China is the worlds largest producer at 299,000 tons (USA produces 70,000 tons) (figures for 2005).

· The group in Baringo produced 8 tons of honey last year.

· Kenya is a world center of bee diversity with over 3,000 species (about 10% of the worlds total number of species)

· Only 150 species or thereabouts produce honey in Kenya.

· Contrary to popular belief, most bee species are harmless… they have no stings

· The Kalenjin people immunize themselves to bees by purposely stinging babies with bees

· In many pats of Africa, honey is an important component of dowry or bride price – a kilogram being made as part payment for the bride – symbolic of the sweetness of sex – or so I’m told

· Bees pollinate most of the crops that we eat

· Bee keeping is most productive in natural habitats, and is a one of the few forms of resource extraction that does not destroy the environment.

The sour facts

· Bees in USA and Europe are disappearing fast – a condition described as colony collapse disorder (ie. Nobody knows why it’s happening). Africa is unaffected so far making honey production a very sweet deal.

Franco Mithika works in Gikomba, an industrial area in greater Nairobi. His job is to take scrap metal tin cans and a soldering iron to fabricate paraffin lamps. Paraffin lamps are used by millions of Kenyans, especially those who cannot afford or get electricity into their home for lighting.

It costs about 110/= Kenyan shillings to make, and it sells for around 150/= ($1.90). You can buy them wholesale for 1550/= ($20) for 24 pieces. It takes about a minute to make one (less for the truly gifted fabricators).

Here is a video of him making one:

Thinking about the unofficial recycling industry

What’s particularly interesting here, is that this scrapes the surface of a rather larger recycling industry that hums beneath the surface of the city. How it works is this. The youngest and poorest go around the city and collect scrap metal of all types. These are then taken to a buyer who sorts them into their different types. This is who people like Franco then buy from and create their wares.

The scrap metal picked up gets sold for just a few shillings per kilo. When sorted, the tin cans that Franco buys, are sold for 300/= ($4) per kilo.

So, there’s a rather efficient system at work. It’s run by entrepreneurs who figure out a way to make things work. A byproduct is that everything (metal) is used, and much less waste than there would be otherwise.

Gathering and transporting the scraps:

The scrap sorting place (Kawangware):

The cans for the paraffin lamps sorted:

Other “sorted” scrap metal items:

A couple weeks ago one of our inspirations for AfriGadget – Emeka Okafor of Timbuktu Chronicles – put forward an idea on the Ned forums about a “Maker Faire Africa“.

The aim of a Maker Faire-like event is to create a space on the continent where Afrigadget-type innovations, inventions and initiatives can be sought, identified, brought to life, supported, amplified, propagated, etc. Maker Faire Africa asks the question, “What happens when you put the drivers of ingenious concepts from Mali with those from Ghana and Kenya, and add resources to the mix?”

The focus here is not on high-tech, but on manufacturing. Specifically, fabrication, the type of small and unorganized businesses that pop up wherever an entrepreneur is found on the African continent. It gets exciting when you think about gathering some of the real innovators from this sector into one place where they can learn from each other and spread their knowledge from one part of the continent to another.

A few fabrication stories on AfriGadget:

• Re-use in the Unofficial Kenya Ironworks Industry
• Junk Metal + Homemade Welder = Art?
• Homemade welding machines for use in fabrication

The organizing team will collaborate with the organizers of the International Development Design Summit (IDDS), which will be held at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in mid/late Summer 2009, to ensure a well-timed, visible, and celebratory event that draws upon IDDS outcomes and attracts new participants. The aim of Maker Faire Africa 2009 will be to establish partnerships and an organizing infrastructure that could lead to a series of events across the continent.

Needless to say, AfriGadget is 100% behind this initiative and will take an active role in both promotion and organizing, as needed.

[The Maker Faire Africa blog]

Bush camping is one of the greatest pleasures of living in Kenya – only if you have the right equipment. On a recent hastily planned trip to Lake Magadi hot springs we discovered too late that we’d forgotten the jiko (charcoal cooking stove). Stopping in Magadi town which serves only one industry, the Magadi Soda Company, we had one made for us right there and then in a very active jua kali workshop.

I always wondered where the metal for jiko’s came from – In this the many discarded gas cylinders are chopped into segments to make up the body of the jiko.

There seems to be no power shortage here, a mess of electric cables and metal and wooden waste remnants from the soda company is an active business for about 20 artisans making furniture, gates, and jikos for the staff of the soda company.

A ten minute job turned out into a one hour event and a thousand shillings later ($20) we take off proudly with our extremely heavy stove. That’s when we discover that there is no charcoal to be had in this part of the world anyway. We ended up with a 3 stone fire.

At dinner time we realized that we’d forgotten most of the food anyway (camping note to Paula: don’t believe him when he says “I already put it in the car” ).

Nevertheless, the hot springs were fabulous.

The Jiko came home and has not yet been used – and thinking about it now … should I be worrying about cooking on something made from gas cylinders? Is it just iron or could there be lead in this?

Or How to get your camel milk to market in 40 degree C climate.

My brother Dominic Wanjihia invented this gadget which he calls Fine Lined Evaporative Cooler, for rural application in Somalia – the cooling of camels milk for transportation . He was working on a project for VETAID, Somali Pastoral Dairy Development Program – SPDDP,in Burao, Somalia June 2008. All this content belongs to Dominic who has allowed me to post it here- please seek his permission to use this content elsewhere dwanjihia@yahoo.com

Evaporative cooling technology

The evaporative cooling concept has been used for centuries in countless applications. Cooling occurs when a fluid changes state from liquid to vapor. Put simply, evaporation. In order to evaporate, the liquid requires energy or heat. It acquires this heat energy from its immediate surrounding. As the surrounding gives up this heat, it lowers in temperature or cools.

The rate at which evaporation occurs depends largely on two main factors, the amount of heat available and the humidity in the air.

The cooler must also be shaded from direct sunlight otherwise the surfaces absorb UV heat and warms up, becoming ineffective as a cooler.

In short

Evaporative cooling devices work most efficiently in windy, dry and shaded conditions

Charcoal cooler

Everyone knows how to make charcoal fridges. After carrying out extensive tests on evaporative coolers in hot arid Burao, Somaliland, with day temperatures as high as 36^OC in the shade, the charcoal would absorb ambient heat from the air and as opposed to cooling, would warm up the interior compartment.

Imagine wearing a wet thick winter jacket under the palms at a breezy beach. The jacket acts as a wetsuit and will insulate your body preventing heat from escaping.

Fine lined cooler

However, imagine wearing a wet skintight t-shirt in similar conditions. The water evaporates quite rapidly and cools your body.

I applied this concept to the cooler prototype pictured and achieved startling results. The cooler would drop as low as 15.5^OC at night when temperatures averaged 25^OC and maintain under 17^OC during the day at average temps of + 32^OC.

Construction

An elevated metal box is lined interior and exterior with a fabric. In this case I used locally available corrugated galvanized iron sheets for the container and sisal sacking fabric for lining. The upper ends of the fabric overhang in a water trough that rings the top of the cooler. Capillary action causes the water to slowly trickle over the inner and outer surfaces. A small vent keeps the interior air circulating and wind guides or tunnels direct air flow over the exterior surfaces. A low speed small solar powered fan can be incorporated in areas where there is not a constant breeze.

How it works

The circulating air in the interior causes evaporation on the wet surfaces. The necessary energy is acquired from the contents hence cooling them and is transfers to the iron sides.

Wind guides or tunnels direct an airflow over the external sides. The evaporation that occurs acquires energy from the sides causing further cooling of the interior.

Construction design

Cool-box with water-bath interior for rapid milk cooling application– Collection Point Cooler

Walk-in cold-room for vegetable storage

Vehicle mounted for long distance transporters

Features (Comparison to conventional charcoal coolers)

Very simple construction

Corrugated galvanized iron or GI sheets increase the surface area

Wind tunnels guide air flow efficiently over evaporation surfaces

Air flow coolers at tunnel entrances

Being galvanized, the sheets are long lasting

GI sheets are affordable and available in most rural areas

Secondhand sacking fabric is available in virtually every vegetable market

The simple capillary action dripping system replaces more complicated dripping apparatus

Convection current system to increase water-bath cooling efficiency

In hot arid regions, cooling the warm ambient air before it reaches the wet evaporation surfaces increase efficiency. Note. Setup for airflow from either direction

For further information and other rural development concepts and innovative designs, Dom can be reached on

mobile tel +254 722 700 530 dwanjihia@yahoo.com