Year: 2007

$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.]

Bio Latrines in Kenyan Slums

Marlies sends us a bunch of pictures and an interesting story on how bio gas toilets in Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya are being used:

Just the other day on a visit to Kibera Slum I came across this interesting bio gas latrine which is being set up for Kibera people as a response to lacking community toilets. The sanitation situation in Kibera is really really poor! There are a couple of community toilets which where set up after the shooting of the Constant Gardener but only a few years later these are in bad shape! Again, they cost 3/= per visit which is really above of what a typical Kibera inhabitant can afford. Just sum up what it will cost for 5 visits per day for a family of five! So the bio gas latrine is a really good option, since it will generate a little income to make the toilets free of charge.

Here are some pictures:

Kibera bio gas
Kibera Bio Gas Building
Kibera Bio Gas 2

IslamOnline.net has a great writeup on how these work.

[NOTE: If you have any images, stories or reports you’d like others to know about, you can contact us through the AfriGadget contact form. – Thanks Marlies!]

New images! (July 17, 2007). Thanks to Christian Rieck and Marlies:


Bio Latrine - Kibera

Bio Latrine Tower

Rural Bio Gas Generator in Kenya

Mark Steudal, a Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya, sends us this:

This is a picture of a Bio Gas generator. It is basically a 9 foot deep well that is filled with manure and water from the nearby cows. A huge drum is then placed into the well. The drum catches the methane gases that are generated from the manure decomposing, which due to the pressure of the large drum are pumped into the house by a underground hose. This family did most of their cooking on the gas, didn’t need to use firewood or buy charcoal (except when making chapatis of course).

Bio-gas Kenya

[NOTE: If you have any images, stories or reports you’d like others to know about, you can contact us through the AfriGadget contact form. – Thanks Mark!]

African Truck Toys

Kevin Kelly (Co-founder of Wired, author and technologist extraordinaire) blogged about african truck toys, which show the ingenuity of using local materials to make something useful, fun and yes…very cool.

ugandawiretoy The image is from Kevin Kelly’s site, it is of a wire toy made by a child in Uganda.
These are the types of toys the Afrigadget authors and african blogosphere members played with when they were children. I would like to request that if you have pictures showing toys such as these, if you would kindly comment or use our contact page to send us images,so we can showcase more of African ingenuity. You can also tag your images in flickr with afrigadget and we’ll be sure to see them.