After the first day I have to say that I love the spirit I have felt at the event. The same like last year … very vibrant community, expiriencing that they do have omething to give, to show and then – indeed – to celebrate!

A sample of many of the ‘makers’ found at the 2010 Maker Faire Africa held in Nairobi.

[from Afrigadget] 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.

Read more at Afrigadget.com. Follow updates on Twitter. ]]> http://makerfaireafrica.com/2009/08/14/water-sachet-design-challenge-thats-amy/feed/ 0 http://makerfaireafrica.com/2009/08/14/maker-faire-africa-is-rollin/ http://makerfaireafrica.com/2009/08/14/maker-faire-africa-is-rollin/#comments Fri, 14 Aug 2009 15:05:39 +0000 admin http://makerfaireafrica.com/?p=536

Reports from the first Maker Faire Africa are starting to come in. Afrigadget has been active amidst the standing room only crowds. Here’s what’s up:

This morning at Maker Faire Africa, after a short introduction by Nii Simmonds and Emeka Okafor, the team (MFA sponsors) from AndSpace Labs have been moderating a “show and tell” by some of the Makers (which is what we’re calling those who are demo’ing at the event).

William Kamkwamba: Windmills

First up was William Kamkwamba, who is really seen as a success story of this type of microentrepreneur or innovator in Africa. His windmills and the story behind it are an inspiration for many here, especially the aspiring makers with good ideas and their first prototypes. There is now a book, a documentary and a foundation all set up around the inspired story of windmills from Malawi.

IDDS: Ghana

The International Develpment Design Summit has been going on for the last 4 weeks in Kumasi, Ghana. Two members of the team came up to talk about one of the devices that they created from local materials, that will be here at the show as well. It’s a device that allows you to store your food so that it doesn’t spoil as quickly. To see more of the IDDS work, here are the final presentations from earlier this week.

Pat Delaney: Multimachine

“You can have no industrial progress without machine tools.” He’s here to show how you can start from nothing except a pipe with three holes in it and an old/broken engine block, and create a universal machine tool. His is called the Multimachine. Due to weight constraints he couldn’t bring a complete machine, so he brought the rudimentary drills and 200 DVDs full of instructions to the event.

Read the full post at Afrigadget.com. Receive real-time updates by following the #MFA09 hash on Twitter. ]]> http://makerfaireafrica.com/2009/08/14/maker-faire-africa-is-rollin/feed/ 1 http://makerfaireafrica.com/2009/08/14/building-with-maker-dominique-wanjihia-at-mfa09/ http://makerfaireafrica.com/2009/08/14/building-with-maker-dominique-wanjihia-at-mfa09/#comments Fri, 14 Aug 2009 15:03:30 +0000 admin http://makerfaireafrica.com/?p=533  

Dominic Wanjihia building the solar dryer he invented.

[Snipped from Afrigadget] Dominic Wanjihia is from Kenya, and he’s here at Maker Faire Africa in Ghana because of the innovative designs and solutions that he comes up with for problems that ordinary Africans face. We had profiled one of his earlier inventions, an evapocooler for camel milk in Somalia, last year.

He’s been in Accra this last week working in the timber yards in Makola building a food dryer and a food cooler to show at the event. Both of them use air, and the dryer takes advantage of the heat from the sun. More detailed posts will be coming on them, but here’s a few shots of him and the carpenters building the devices.

Read the full article at Afrigadget.com

Sponsors and supports continue to join as the excitement builds around Maker Faire Africa (MFA) later this week. Held August 14 – 16 in Accra, Ghana, MFA will bring together ingenuity and invention from across the continent. Focused on 4 key innovation areas, MFA is poised to show the world a different face of Africa, where partnership, creativity, and innovation come together to create products and designs that can be used around the world.

“Maker Faire Africa aims to stoke the fires of innovation, catalyze the seeds of ingenuity, and amplify the pace of invention, wonder and curiosity amongst the young and young at heart,” said Emeka Okafor organizer of MFA and director of TEDAfrica. “We intend to dial back the negative reinforcement that pervades the continent in matters of career choice and conformity and will give center stage to the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things.”

A key part of MFA is the support they have received from sponsors around the globe. Through their support and vision MFA will deliver on the promise of premier event in Africa. “By sponsoring and co-organising the Maker Fair Africa we are helping to showcase role model makers and put the spotlight on innovation as the way forward for Africa,” said Emer Beamer head of Butterfly Works Learning Lab. “These Makers are the people who build the future and in all Butterfly Works projects, our goal is to enable and support this creativity every step of the way.” Sponsors include:

American Society of Mechanical Engineers – founded in 1880 as the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, today’s ASME promotes the art, science & practice of mechanical & multidisciplinary engineering and allied sciences around the globe.

AndSpace Labs – founded by Andspace Consulting, AndSpace Labs collaborates with the public to co-create tools, perspectives, and relationships to help society meet the challenges of tomorrow using foresight and design thinking.

BusyInternet – founded in Ghana in 2001 with a unique mission to provide both commercial services as well as social and economic development with a range of events, training, debates, as well as a growing community of IT entrepreneurs.

Butterfly Works – an inspiration-driven social solution and design agency. The products and services of Butterfly Works range from consumer social product design and distribution to digital and mobile educational materials and learning environments.

ecoband – provides comprehensive, flexible and cost effective satellite and fiber optic-based solutions for Internet backbone connectivity as well as broadband wireless last-mile solutions. For the ECOWAS countries of West Africa.

The International Development Design Summit – MIT’s IDDS is a month-long collaboration that brings together people from around the globe to build technologies for communities in the developing world. The program is the brainchild of MIT Senior Lecturer and D-Lab founder Amy Smith, a past winner of the MacArthur “genius” grant.

Internet Research – a private research enterprise incorporated in the Republic of Ghana focusing on engineering, consulting and education in the area of Information Communication Technology (ICT)

Inveneo – a non-profit social enterprise whose mission is to get tools of information and communications technology (ICT) – computing, Internet access, and telephony – to the more than 2 billion people living in rural and underserved areas of the developing world.

Moving Windmills – based on the award-winning short film of the same name, Moving Windmills: The William Kamkwamba Story is a feature-length documentary that shares the touching tale of a boy whose imagination and ingenuity inspired a family, a village and a nation.

Mozilla – The Mozilla project is a global community of people who believe that openness, innovation, and opportunity are key to the continued health of the Internet. We have worked together since 1998 to ensure that the Internet is developed in a way that benefits everyone.

MFA has also attracted a host of industry thought leaders, bloggers and news organizations who are dedicated to building the future of Africa including Amy Smith, Founder of MIT’s D-Lab, Africa News, AshokaTech, Emeka Okafor of TEDAfrica and Timbuktu Chronicles, Erik Hersman of Afrigadget, Global Development Commons, Henry Barnor of Afrobotics, Mark Grimes, founder of Ned.com, Nii Simmonds of Nubian Cheetah, Next Billion, and TechBridgeWorld,

“This is long overdue and I am thrilled to see an African event based on innovative solutions to problems developed by local participants,“ said Grimes. “Maker Faire Africa represents the best of grassroots efforts, localization, innovation, and ingenuity when it comes to the continent by focusing on its own unique challenges and tremendous opportunities.”

For more information about MFA visit www.makerfaireafrica.com

Media Contacts
Ghana
Emeka Okafor or
Nii Simmonds
+233 248576430
emeka.okafor@gmail.com
nas146@yahoo.com

GO Logo

This is some exciting news, and a great example of how Maker Faire Africa seeks to spur ongoing invention and innovation activities in Africa.

The GO Ingenuity Award (GIA) – which aims to share the excitement of invention and innovation with youth - will launch at Maker Faire Africa in Accra in the middle of August. The GIA will be awarded to artists, inventors, and small business entrepreneurs as an incentive to stimulate their interaction with and inspire the next generation of “makers.”

Aiming to build on the momentum of Maker Faire Africa, the GO Campaign has announced that it will award one-year, one-time fellowship grants to individual applicants who are eager to share their skills with marginalized youth in developing countries in ways that educate and inspire youth to harness their own ingenuity. The GIA emphasizes the sharing of innovative artistry and technology in informal, hands-on learning workshops in places where youth already gather.

GO Campaign is dedicated to empowering orphans and vulnerable children throughout the world to secure a better future. GO is a youth-driven nonprofit that cuts out the red tape and provides a direct connection to deserving grass-roots organizations serving children in need. To learn more about the GO Ingenuity Award, visit the GO Campaign website.

+233261685159

After you register, you will receive an SMS response containing a 8 digit hexadecimal confirmation number. When you show up at the event and give that number to us, you will be entered into a drawing where you have a chance to win a prize.

How it was made

Henry Barnor and Henry Addo, two Ghanaians developers who are helping out with the organization of Maker Faire Africa, spent a late night hacking some python code. Then, with some early morning debugging and about $50 they got this SMS RSVP solution up and running.

The data is then made available in a Google spreadsheet for the organizing team.

We have a phone with a Zain SIM card connected to a laptop running FrontlineSMS. When FrontlineSMS receives an SMS it sends the data via HTTP to a python web application running on Google’s App Engine infrastructure.

The webapp generates the confirmation number and sends the response using Clickatell‘s SMS gateway API. The webapp also saves the data to a database and the Google spreadsheet.