Transportation – Page 6

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.

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.

One Man, an Airplane and a Hummer

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!

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:

“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.

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.

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.

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