idds – AfriGadget

Ball Valve Chlorine Doser

With one 5 liter bag of chlorine, and a device that costs $3 to build, you can clean 100,000 liters of water.

Here at Maker Faire Africa is Killian Deku, a Ghanaian working in the IDDS program, has created a ball valve chlorine doser with the help of his team mates from India, the US and Tanzania. Their only real costs were the ball valve and the time taken to create the bamboo structure that holds it. The one variable cost is the bag of chlorine used to cleanse the water.

Ball Valve Chlorine Water Cleanser from WhiteAfrican on Vimeo.

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…

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.

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 Faire: Africa 2009

A couple weeks ago one of our inspirations for AfriGadget – Emeka Okafor of Timbuktu Chronicles – put forward an idea on the Ned forums about a “Maker Faire Africa“.

The aim of a Maker Faire-like event is to create a space on the continent where Afrigadget-type innovations, inventions and initiatives can be sought, identified, brought to life, supported, amplified, propagated, etc. Maker Faire Africa asks the question, “What happens when you put the drivers of ingenious concepts from Mali with those from Ghana and Kenya, and add resources to the mix?”

The focus here is not on high-tech, but on manufacturing. Specifically, fabrication, the type of small and unorganized businesses that pop up wherever an entrepreneur is found on the African continent. It gets exciting when you think about gathering some of the real innovators from this sector into one place where they can learn from each other and spread their knowledge from one part of the continent to another.

Old bicycle turned into a furnace bellows

A few fabrication stories on AfriGadget:

The organizing team will collaborate with the organizers of the International Development Design Summit (IDDS), which will be held at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in mid/late Summer 2009, to ensure a well-timed, visible, and celebratory event that draws upon IDDS outcomes and attracts new participants. The aim of Maker Faire Africa 2009 will be to establish partnerships and an organizing infrastructure that could lead to a series of events across the continent.

Needless to say, AfriGadget is 100% behind this initiative and will take an active role in both promotion and organizing, as needed.

[The Maker Faire Africa blog]