Archive for the ‘Transportation’ Category

Bio-Diesel From a Small Village in Sierra Leone

Makeni is a small town in Sierra Leone. Like the rest of the country, it is trying to recover from years of internal strife. Unlike the rest of the country, they have the Binkolo Growth Centre, a small industrial project near Makeni where the manufacture of small farm implements, tailoring, carpentry and blacksmithing takes place, and includes the use of disabled people. Two VSO volunteers, one from Kenya one from Canada, work to train and bring new ideas to the centre.

One such idea was to create a fuel replacement for their pickup by using local palm nuts, a by-product of the palm kernels, which are generally fed to pigs or used for fertilizer. Since diesel fuel for their truck runs approximately $5/gallon, it wouldn’t hurt to try.

Palm Nut Crushing Machine

It became clear that in our poor country the chief hurdles were getting the chemicals and the right equipment. The search was on for the chemicals and after quite a treasure hunt and more than a few bribes we managed to find 4 litres of Methanol and 5 kilos of Potassium Hydroxide (enough to make a good bomb I think)…

…Actually the whole scene was quite amusing. Here we were hoping to compete with the big oil producers in the back yard of a small village and using an untried collection of old car parts, old pipes and taps attached to a used chemical container, all put together in an image downloaded from the internet. Nonetheless we were fuelled by much excitement, with much of the local community looking on, wondering what on earth we were up to.

Read the rest of this great story, and see a lot more images, on Paul in Sierra Leone’s Blog!

The Team behind the bio-diesel project in Makeni Sierra Leone

The Truck running on bio-diesel

(hat tip Emeka)

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

One Man, an Airplane and a Hummer

Mechanic and Plane MakerThere’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!

Mubarak Abdullahi’s home-made helicopter takes Nigeria’s Kano Plains by storm

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:

Mubarak Abdullahi’s home-made helicopter

“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.

Mubarak Abdullahi’s home-made helicopter  Mubarak Abdullahi’s home-made helicopter



A South African’s Homemade Paraglider

Most of the stories on AfriGadget are stories of work-based ingenuity. However, every once in a while you get an incredible story about someone who creates an amazing do-it-yourself “fun” item. In this case Wired is reporting about Cyril Mazibuko who creates his own home made paraglider:

Cyril is the only black South African currently registered with the sport’s ruling body. And it all started with a glider he made from plastic bags, purloined rope and baling wire, a glider that flew — sort of — though it both amazed and horrified the professional paragliders who saw it.


South African’s Homemade Paraglider

Read the full story at Wired

(hat tip Tyrell)

$100 Bicycle Motor Gets 50 km per Liter

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.

Motor On A Bike in Kenya

[Note: Send in your pictures and stories showing African ingenuity using our Contact Form.]

Ghanian mechanics bring cars back from the dead

The BBC Website carries a story about a Ghanaian mechanic called Frank Darko who claims that he can make any car from wrecks and scrap.

From the article:

Mr Darko is a “straighter” - so-called because he can straighten crooked vehicles.

He is one of an estimated 80,000 mechanics, engineers and artisans who work in Suame Magazine, an industrial slum, possibly one of Africa’s biggest.

Frank Darko specialises in straightening wrecked vehicles. On the outskirts of the Ghana’s second city, Kumasi, the Magazine’s origins lie in the city’s long history of working gold and other metals.

Over time, more and more of these artisans turned their hands to vehicle repairs and engineering, eventually moving to Kumasi’s Suame suburb after World War II.

In a continent and a country where buying new can stretch already overburdened pockets, the Magazine’s artisans show how far you can get with ingenuity, skill and a few mechanical tools.

How-to: Rebuild an Alternator in Africa

Bernard took me to see Stephan, an auto mechanic who is a master of fixing things with very few tools or supplies. Stephan is truly amazing, an example of an African who uses his ingenuity to solve problems that would seem insurmountable to others.

One of the things Stephan has done, is figured out a way to rebuild alternators with limited materials. Below are some pictures and a video that discuss how he does it. Supplies needed:

Rebuilt Alternator   newish alternator

  • 17 gauge copper wire
  • plastic sheet
  • bamboo
  • broken alternator

Here’s the video showing how it’s done:

Karts for Rural Africa

African KART ProjectPractical Action is a group that endevors to help solve problems in developing nations from the perspective of those in poor or rural areas. One of their projects is to help solve transportation needs.

The programme employs the following to improve transport:

  • Introduction and improvement of affordable means of transport such as bicycles, trailers, animal carts, pack animal and push carts
  • Development of local level transport services
  • Improvement of transport infrastructure such as foot paths and tracks as well as roads
  • Non-transport interventions to bring facilities closer to people e. water wells and grinding mills.

The karts shown here were designed to carry 180 liters of water. The owners make money by either hauling goods, or by leasing out the kart to others.

Bicycles: Transportation for Everything

One thing that I’ve always been amazed with is the limitless uses that bicycles are put to in Africa. It really is amazing to see them hauling everything from people, to 10 stalks of bananas, to coffins.

The “Black Mamba” bicycle - Low cost, steel-framed, traditional bicycle imported to Africa from England in the 1900s, revolutionizing road transport in Africa. A sturdy and reliable workhorse now to be found in the remotest corners of the continent.

Boda Boda - The bikes found in Central and East Africa used as taxis. The term came from being located on the border. The bodaboda taxis are part of the African bicycle culture, they started in the 1960s and 1970s and are still spreading from their origin (the Kenyan-Ugandan BORDER) to other regions.

Boda Boda Bicycle
Wooden Bicycles - Handcrafted, locally made bikes using wood and rubber for the tires. Yes, they do have brakes, which are much needed in the mountainous areas of Uganda, Zaire/Congo, and Western Kenya.

Wooden Bike
Banana Hauling - I was truly amazed as I travelled through the villages in Eastern Uganda to see the amount of banana stalks that could be loaded onto one of these bikes. The most I ever counted was 12 stalks, but I’m sure that someone out there can say they saw someone beat that recored. I’m digging through my archives for a picture of the 12 stalks, but until then this one will have to do.

Banana Hauling on a Bicycle
The Fundi - Ahh, the bicycle fundi, a magician with a baiskeli. Using only a pair of plyers, an old innertube and bailing wire he can make your ride new again! Don’t worry, if the innertubes are beyond repair and you have no money to buy new ones, my friend the fundi will show you how to pack grass into the tire to make it like new.

Bicycle Mechanic in Africa