MFA: Water bag design challenge!

Amy Smith (of MIT’s IDDS) somehow got a hold of a mic and madhouse has now ensued! Everyone has been split up by their birth month into groups. They are given 5 water bags (sachets) and told to solve the world’s greatest problems. 30 minutes later we get…

5 Bag challenge

January: The Sachet Kebab
Decreasing litter and polution. People can collect water sachets off the ground easily with a pole and spiked end. It can be placed along the roads, and a lot of trash can just be spiked on the tip of it.

February: Hydro Electric
Generate electricity by using the bags to create small turbines.

March: Light absorbent and heat absorbent bags
They also had a crazy idea of drinking the water, peeing in the bag and selling that to farmers for fertilizer… to much laughter…

April: Potting and a Wallet
Drink the water and make it empty. Cut the top off and put in soil and grow small plants. Take another bag and put a small hole in it for drip irrigation. Second idea: use the bag to put your money in for when it rains.

May: The individual water-shower packet and a purse
Hang the water and put a small hole in it. Create a purse out of it to hold a camera or mobile phone.

June: Waterbelt, glasses strings
They’ve created some really interesting spectacle (glasses) holder. Also, a waterbelt to hold the water as you’re moving around.

Maker Faire Africa: Ghana 2009

July: Water purifier
Uses the light from the sun to help purify the water. It takes a bottle top cut off and used as a funnel as well. It’s shaped like a train, for marketing reasons.

August: Kids toys
Make small airplanes and hats for children and an hourglass made from 2 water bags.

September: Drip irrigation and a pillow
Puncture a bottle or a bag on top to collect water, then use for drip irrigation. Also fill multiple old empty bags with air and put them inside a pillow case to create a pillow.

October: Drip irrigation
Starts with a bag, then a tube made of old empty bags that can direct the water further and over more areas.

November: Water resistant mobile phone case
“Your phone case is not water resistant, ours is. Clap for us.”
“We have created a water wallet, not just a plastic money carrier.”

December: Water sachet lighting system and a sachet wrist watch band
Put full bags on your roof that diffuses the light and warms the water.

Maker: Show and Tell

[Note: Pictures will be on the Maker Faire Africa Flickr group. All images by AfriGadget are CC-by licensed for anyone to use anywhere they like.]

Maker Faire Africa: Ghana 2009

This morning at Maker Faire Africa, after a short introduction by Nii Simmonds and Emeka Okafor, the team (MFA sponsors) from AndSpace Labs have been moderating a “show and tell” by some of the Makers (which is what we’re calling those who are demo’ing at the event).

William Kamkwamba: Windmills

First up was William Kamkwamba, who is really seen as a success story of this type of microentrepreneur or innovator in Africa. His windmills and the story behind it are an inspiration for many here, especially the aspiring makers with good ideas and their first prototypes. There is now a book, a documentary and a foundation all set up around the inspired story of windmills from Malawi.

The crowd LOVES William. The Africans are so inspired by him due to it being done on his own without a bunch of outside help. This means from the expats who do a lot of good work of course, which is a good point. How much more exciting is it to see home-grown ingenuity and innovation making it big than it is if it’s imported in from overseas?

IDDS: Ghana

The International Develpment Design Summit has been going on for the last 4 weeks in Kumasi, Ghana. Two members of the team came up to talk about one of the devices that they created from local materials, that will be here at the show as well. It’s a device that allows you to store your food so that it doesn’t spoil as quickly. To see more of the IDDS work, here are the final presentations from earlier this week.

Pat Delaney: Multimachine

“You can have no industrial progress without machine tools.” He’s here to show how you can start from nothing except a pipe with three holes in it and an old/broken engine block, and create a universal machine tool. His is called the Multimachine. Due to weight constraints he couldn’t bring a complete machine, so he brought the rudimentary drills and 200 DVDs full of instructions to the event.

Finally, Pat makes a call for someone to create cheaply and widely available welding glasses. Why? Because so many people in Africa are using sunglasses to weld, but it ruins your eyes in 3-4 years and you can’t weld anymore. This is terrible due to it taking 10 years to become a master welder.

Building Dominic Wanjihu’s Food Dryer

Dominic Wanjihia is from Kenya, and he’s here at Maker Faire Africa in Ghana because of the innovative designs and solutions that he comes up with for problems that ordinary Africans face. We had profiled one of his earlier inventions, an evapocooler for camel milk in Somalia, last year.

He’s been in Accra this last week working in the timber yards in Makola building a food dryer and a food cooler to show at the event. Both of them use air, and the dryer takes advantage of the heat from the sun. More detailed posts will be coming on them, but here’s a few shots of him and the carpenters building the devices.

Dominic Wanjihia in Accra building his food dryer

Plans for the food dryer

Eben building the food racks

Lumber yard in Makola