Our good friend Forsty sent in the following picture of a “climatised” bus he took in Mopti, Mali the other day:
While it may not be the perfect example of an AfriGadget, it still helps to illustrate how people make do with what is available.
For some folks this may just be an unroadworthy vehicle, for others it’s a comfortable bus that will take you from A to B. Hey, and did we mention it’s air-conditioned? 🙂
As the BBC originally reported, Cote d’Ivoire now has some new buses rolling around the country; specifically in the capital of Abidjan. While this story is seemingly uninteresting, it needs to be stated that these are their own buses, produced within Cote d’Ivoire by domestic transportation company, Sotra.
Above and beyond employment, the bus engineers from the Ivorian “reaspora” (those who returned to their home country after time abroad) had good reason to build domestically, “In Europe the technology is very sophisticated with lots of electronic devices. In Africa we don’t need this. We just need robust buses because our roads are not very well done like in Europe. This is an African design for Africa.”
There are initial jitters from people about the reliability of the new buses, but given that Sotra has been building water buses and been involved in the transportation sector for some time, the worries will most likely go unfounded.
Miquel Hudin is the co-founder of and lead developer for Maneno, a blogging platform developed specifically for the requirements of bloggers in Sub-Saharan Africa. He writes regularly on African issues at Subsaharska on Maneno.
[H/T Timbuktu Chronicles]
