Hardware Hacking: Handmade Tools in Africa

I’ve written about handmade tools in Africa before, but it didn’t generate a ton of interest, so I’ve not followed-up on it very much in my travels. I was really happy to see that another person was intrigued by this though, Kevin Kelly has a post where Tom Ritchey, master bike frame builder, sent him pictures of hand-made tools he spotted at bike shops in Rwanda.

Fabrication is an important skill in developing nations. Along the whole process you see reuse taking place, even down to the tools being used to create the items in question.

A Kenyan micro-entrepreneur recently told me:

In the sixties, during the space race between Russia and the U.S.A the Russian Engineers, when told there was no more money for the budget philosophically said “now we have no money then we can think” and they were able to be tremendously creative when compared to the Americans despite the limited funds at their disposal. This is the same approach I use in my initiatives.

As I’m not the only one who thinks these are pretty cool, I’m digging into the AfriGadget Flickr Group to pull out a picture that I never published here on the blog. These are small engine repair tools built to work on motorcycles, generators and lawnmowers (among other things):

Modified Small Engine Repair Tools

And finally, a video of Bernard, one of the local small engine repair guys in Nairobi (who’s shop has since disappeared) talking about how he makes some of the tools:

AfriGadget Innovator Series: Simon Mwacharo of Craftskills

I recently had a chance to conduct an email interview with Simon Mwacharo, an entrepreneur based in Nairobi, Kenya who a great example of what George Ayitteh has so aptly described as “The Cheetah Generation”.

Simon owns and runs CraftSkills, a small business based in Nairobi, Kenya that focuses on designing and building self-sustaining renewable energy projects in places not accessible to the electric grid. Craftskills had to date undertaken challenging projects in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Cameroon and Rwanda among other places. Simon, whom AfriGadget first got to meet last summer at TED Global in Arusha, Tanzania, graciously agreed to conduct an email interview with AfriGadget.

Craftskills windmill project

AfriGadget: Could you tell us when and how Craft Skills got into the business of renewable energy in East Africa and the inspiration behind the organization?

Simon: CRAFTSKILLS was found in the year 2000 by myself. I was inspired by a challenge from my rural home where we have not had power for the last 40 plus years since [Kenya’s] independence [in 1963]. I come from a hill side village in Sagalla, Taita Hills in Coast Province where we receive quite some strong wind from the Nyika Plateau. This wind passes through without being tapped and sometimes our roofs can not stand in its way.

I started talking to people about wind turbines and how I can get an affordable one which I can make and produce for other needy people. When darkness falls in these villages plus the fog it is virtually impossible to travel the terrain at night.

AfriGadget: Tell us a little about the people behind Craft Skills and the staff who work for the organization.

Simon: I started with two workers. I could not afford to hire trained people so I decided to train myself first then train my two boys. Then I got a friend who repairs radios and TVs in Kibera to help me design and put together a charge controller.

Now we have a team of 20 people and other partners out there in the field with their staff totaling 50. We have technicians, welders fitters, fiberglass experts and engineers and sales people.

AfriGadget: What is the typical profile of a Craft Skills project? Who is your typical client and how are the projects typically executed?

Simon: Most of our clients are not the owners of the projects we put up. They benefit from the battery charging services in the wind/solar sites we put up with our partners. The low income earners who cannot afford grid power or are in settlements where grid power is unavailable. We take both to do the sites ourselves involving the people on the ground as partners. Others are home owners who have invested a lot on building good homes in non grid areas – these put up turbines for their own use like lighting, and pumping water from wells and boreholes. The other segment is the business people I market areas where there is no grid who put up turbines to run charging centres and sell power to other shops or run their off-grid businesses like lodges and hotels, schools and other institutions.

AfriGadget: Can you share with our readers some of the challenges that Craft Skills faces in executing your projects?

Simon: We have faced cultural challenges where we cannot put a turbine on the most ideal site due to beliefs on such sites hence we have to educate the citizens to allow us to do so or redesign the project and relocate. Another is the financial capability of the citizens we find in these off grid areas.

[As a result of this] we have designed low power product (battery bundles and LED lights) to reach them so that they can be counted as beneficiaries of this new technology.

AfriGadget: Why renewable energy? What is the rationale behind Craft Skills’ exclusive focus on projects that produce energy from renewable sources.

Simon: We were looking for something which is affordable and sustainable and cuts across the economic sectors. Solar was proving to be more expensive, delicate, sophisticated and easily stolen when installed on ones home. We needed to sell people more power at a cheaper rate hence wind was the best candidate.

Wind is everywhere just like solar – one needs to get the right spot to put the turbine as high as they can. Its 24 hrs (Day and Night) and we found a cheap way we could make our turbines take advantage of low wind situations with the multi-pole generator, hollow blades for the propeller, with 90 per cent locally available materials making our technology the best application for this region.

AfriGadget: Which would you say has been the most satisfying/gratifying project that you have been involved with at Craft Skills? What was so special to you about this particular project?

Simon: The Chifiri water pan project to me is most gratifying. This settlement is all arid land pastoral community. The demand for water for drinking washing and watering the thousands of livestock is enormous.

Our turbine provided a cheaper solution for water and lighting the “manyattas” around the water pan. The contractor on the ground is excellent on his construction of the earth dams. His design impressed me that water was going to be available for over 6 months instead of the normal 4 months after the rainy seasons. He made sure the dams were well compacted and fenced to avoid animals hoofing inside the dam – increasing the rate of percolation and lose of water in the ground. Water is only available at the kiosks which are piped and placed near the settlements. The project provides water troughs for the animals to drink from and bathrooms for the people to clean themselves in. Within the fenced dam there is an armed home guard or caretaker manning the place with a security light up the tower hoisting the turbine.

Craftskills - Water wheel at a water project in Cameroon

Simon was also interviewed by Juliana Chebet aka AfroMusing, a Senior Editor at AfriGadget on CraftSkills. You can find the video at this link.

AfriGadget Gets a New Look!

We’re proud to announce a brand new design for AfriGadget! The old design was rather old and ugly, so thanks for putting up with it for the last 20 months. Actually, I think the reason that there are so many more RSS subscribers to AfriGadget than daily visitors can be attributed to how it looked… 🙂

AfriGadget Redesigned!

2 New Things:

You’ll notice two buttons just beneath the header. We’re working on a number of items, two of which we’re ready to unveil.

The AfriGadget Grassroots Reporting Project
We’re intent on getting more AfriGadget contributors from all over Africa. Part of that plan is to find potential editors and set them up with a mobile phone with which to take pictures and do interviews. If you know someone that would make a good fit, let me know.

The AfriGadget Store (phase 1)
The first phase of the store is making some AfriGadget gear (t-shirts and mugs) available to everyone (hint: you can customize any design and select any type of shirt/color to put it on). The next step is to create a full-featured store with some of the items that are made by the entrepreneurs shown on AfriGadget. This would include products, as well as plans.

One of the big goals here is to create a service that doesn’t just publish interesting stories about African micro-entrepreneurs, though we do plan on continuing that, but to also explore ways that we can be a conduit back to those very same people. This redesign already has our future plans for dealing with entrepreneurs built into it. Part of that is the future phases of the AfriGadget store, but we’re also looking at ways to partner with others and encourage direct investment into worthy entrepreneurs businesses.

Look for more on that in a future update. Until then, we’re just happy we have some new stuff to show you!

If you find any errors, which I’m sure there will be some, please leave a comment or shoot me an email.

Lastly, a special thanks goes out to Jared for making this site look so good.