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)

The BodaPhone in Uganda

Ken Banks of Kiwanja.net is a mobile expert as it relates to the developing countries. He sends in a picture from his most recent trip to Uganda. 200 Ugandan Shillings per unit is equivalent to about $0.11.

Ken on the BodaPhone:

I met this phone operator off Kampala Road this afternoon, who was riding round on this bike. Luckily he was a fellow Liverpool supporter so we hit it off straight away – and he let me take a photo of his BodaPhone setup. Pretty neat, and with a spare battery to allow him to stay on the road longer. Uganda is really hotting up on the mobile front, with two new operators about to enter the market towards the end of the year.


the BodaPhone in Uganda

Ken is quite active in this space and runs the very popular Social Mobile Group, found on both Facebook and on his site. He has also been interviewed in a story today on BBC that talks about the mobiles in Africa.

The VIP – an invention from Zimbabwe

Ingenuity, obviously, isn’t only limited to the African continent, as it is especially found in societies where access to resources is limited. While we’ve been able to witness lots of interesting innovations from other regions of the world that were born out of a lack of readily available solutions, we must also not forget that a few smart ideas were actually developed in Africa and have since then conquered the world.

One of such smart ideas is the Ventilated (Improved) Pit Latrine, in short: the VIP – which was developed as the “Blair Latrine” by Peter Morgan, who has been living and working in Zimbabwe for over 35 years, researching and developing water and sanitation technologies.

venting a pit latrine
Diagram showing effect of vent pipe on functions of pit latrine (source)

The major advantage of the VIP over a normal pit latrine is that it comes with a ventilation pipe (covered with a durable fly screen on top) which reduces flies and odour. In the absence of other alternatives, the Ventilated Pit Latrine is considered reliable, which explains the success of this technology: over 500.000+ units of this type have been built in Zimbabwe alone and it has proven to work elsewhere around the world.

The VIP clearly isn’t the solution to sustainable sanitation as it comes with a few limitations, but it does function without water and has very low investment, operation and maintenance costs.

Next to some interesting experiments with different water pump systems such as the Blair hand pump (also known as the Zimbabwe Bush Pump) or the spiral water wheel pump, Peter is also active in the field of ecological sanitation and recently published a very interesting booklet titled “Toilets That Make Compost” where he writes about his experiences with compost toilets such as the Arborloo and the Fossa Alterna.

arborloo.jpg
screenshot from Peter Morgan’s manual on how to build an Arborloo (PDF,~ 3,1MB)

While there’s no single sanitation concept that will work in all places around the world, the VIP for one is a proven technology which has been accepted by its users since 30 years.

Street Meat Heater: A Simple Solution

Simon Kasiraba is one of many sausage vendors found in the cities and small towns throughout East Africa. He’s the prototypical micro-entrepreneur trying to make a living by supplying a need (food – conveniently available). He’s on AfriGadget because of the simple innovative solution that he employs to keep his food ready to be eaten at all times of the day – which is very important when you’re set up beside a bus stop.


Sausage Cart - Simple Heating for Street Meat

He keeps the meat warm using steam, with a simple charcoal heater placed inside the body of the sausage cart. The water goes into the pipe on the side of the cart, and floods a water panel directly underneath the meat. When it gets hot, the steam keeps the sausages warm, yet juicy. The cart cost him 14,000 shillings (about $200). He sells each sausage for 10 shillings (about 0.14 cents).

Here is a video of Simon showing me his sausage heating cart:


Images of the sausage heating carts can be found in the AfriGadget Flickr image pool.


Inside the Sausage Heating Cart

If you have any stories that would fit well on AfriGadget, contact us, we’d love to hear from you!