The lists of people looking for matches is now up on the site, HERE, Sorry to all that it took a little while. Please browse the lists, especially - but not only - those from Ghana and see if you ‘match’ with someone there.
Match a Maker is a great way of helping each other, you can offer someone advice on design or technologies for example and perhaps gain advice or help on funding or mentorship. There are so many ways to ‘match’
At the live event in Ghana, lots of matches were made, for example: a man working on biocarburant found a mentor to further develop his business model, an inventor needing AutoCad skills was linked with the FabLab in Ghana, a shea butter maker was linked with a fabricator for a new machine to do same, a local children’s community organisation was linked to FM radio sender makers and a Ugandan man was linked to a mentor for developing his bicycle driven medical care service.
Now we want to continue this momentum online. So see if you can help ‘match’ people to take inventing and making to the next step.
We are also working on a fully fledged platform to support the same types of matching but then globally. We envisage liking this to a ‘Whuffie‘ type approach to reward people who match others. You can help us design and build this full platform, if you have suggestion are are willing to volunteer time to get this platform up, running and connected please mail us
Patrica Temma Bio and friend - Emer's match @makerfairafrica
Pat Delany inventor of the MultiMachine who we were so lucky to have at MFA09 talks about “the really big things that happened” at the event. As if that was not enough he shrugged off the abortive takeoff his departing Delta flight experienced:
Pat Delany (L) makes a point at MFA09
Should be home by now but plane had engine trouble on takeoff.Better here than over the ocean in a 2 engine plane! Really big things have happened.A trade school will probably expand to other parts of the country and take the MM with it.An MIT lab is going to make and test the drill.People are going to make a “jungle” drill to make bolt holes to plank a bridge with wood that is so tough that nails just bounce off.Maker Faire Africa is sponsoring a country wide MultiMachine building contest.
A Nigerian venture capital guy is going to make my penetrating oil.I have been invited to join an American Association of Mechanical Engineers developing country group and maybe make a couple of speeches.And really big deal..I have started a program to provide African welders with better eye protection than the sun glasses they normally use. They often lose much of their sight after just a few years. The goal is to get the rod makers to provide filtering glass with boxes of rods. As it is now they are blinding their customers
Way to go Pat! Sourced from the MultiMachine user group
[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.
Maker Faire Opening Plenary
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.
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
Anyone planning on going to Maker Faire Africa can register by sending a text message with their name or email address to:
+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.
KUMASI GHANA MAY 25 2009: Over 70 participants representing 21 countries meet in Ghana July 8th,
2009 to kick off the third annual International Development Design Summit (IDDS).
IDDS aims to produce innovative, affordable, scalable technologies to meet the very real needs of the 2.6
billion people earning less than $2-a-day. Participants receive a crash course in developing appropriate
technology and then break into small teams, each receiving a different design challenge to solve a specific
problem faced daily by people around the world. Unlike most academic conferences, this summit
emphasizes the development of prototypes, not just papers and proceedings. Unlike technology workshops, IDDS is about creative processes, as well as products.
IDDS 2009 uniquely embodies the spirit of co-creation by collaborating with local mechanics, entrepreneurs and potential end users. At various points, participants will travel to surrounding rural villages and interact closely with community partners. The aim is to develop the creative capacity within the communities themselves, enabling the members to become active creators of technology, rather than merely passive recipients.
The 2009 participant roster reflects diverse backgrounds and skills sets: a woman from Sierra Leone
teaching welding to girls, a Brazilian artist using industrial waste in her work, and a solar energy technician
from India, to name a few. By creating this global network, IDDS hopes to empower individuals and their
communities to tackle the tough problems that reside in the developing world.
IDDS is the brain child of Massachusetts Institute of Technology senior lecturer and MacArthur “Genius
Grant” award winner Amy Smith. The summit runs through August 12th, 2009. Finished prototypes will be
showcased at Maker Faire Africa, a celebration of African ingenuity, innovation and invention hosted by
AfriGadget in Accra, Ghana from August 14th-16th.
TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE SUMMIT, VISIT THE 2009 BLOG OR IDDS HOMEPAGE.
While the Maker Faire does concentrate on innovation and technology, we are in fact keen to showcase all kinds of African makers, creators, inventors, designers and artists. At the Fair in August we expect a great cross section of makers, media and technologies from local and international hand.
Adding flair to the selection of innovators already coming are two media makers both from Ghana.
The first is Nana Kofi Acquah a photographer (nanakofiacquah.blogspot.com) whose work spans high end fashion and product photography to gritty street documentary work. He is currently busy with a series covering ‘Ghanian makers’ which he will show in August.
Talking and cooking, by Nana Kofi Acquah
Also showcasing will be Africa Interactive (www.africa-interactive.net)
a fast growing multimedia agency in Africa, with 600 local reporters in 38 African countries. They cover stories from an African persepctive through their network of reporters who are always on hand to make a mobile report. They have done work for large international companies and local and international ngos. The team from the Ghana based office will represent them and their work.
Simple video reporting from Africa interactive
Matt Berg over at BuildAfrica blog has an interesting story of Mr Acheampong, a local entrepreneur who makes money by charging people’s mobile phones. He uses a homemade C-cell battery setup to do this (see below):
“Mr. Acheampong, one of the Abusuapanin Community Leader’s in Bonsaaso village, use’s 4 C dry cell batteries to charge mobile phones. The four 1.5V batteries in series adds up to 6V which is similar to the 5.5V that most cell phones require (amperage varies). The set of batteries cost 1 Ghana Cedi and he is able to charge four phones before needing to replace the batteries. This compares to the 1 Cedi cost of charging a phone at the local cell tower.”
However, Matt points out how inefficient this type of setup is. There are new low-cost options including the Tough Stuff Solar Panel coming in at around $20 retail.
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