Africa , Event , Fabrication , Featured Makers , Ghana
Building with Maker Dominic Wanjihia at MFA09
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
The Maker Faire is all about Makers and meetings. In order to facilitate more exchange between makers and other makers and between makers and attendees Butterfly Works is running a Match a Maker service.
Everyone at the Maker Faire will be invited to take part, fill in the form or text their request to a mobile number. Then we will match up people who have related requests. We know that many of the attendees even if they are not presenting their work during the Faire itself are in fact entrepeneurs, innovators, trend watchers etc. In this way they will have another channel to meet up with people who need their services. Matches could include for example a programmer in Kenya meeting a new client from Ghana, a designer from Ghana meeting with an international group of makers.
Watch this space or the Maker Faire Africa twitter for the mobile number, so you can take part even if not present. After the event we will report on some of the best matches made.
Dominic Wanjihia's "Evapocooler," used to keep Somali herders' milk cool, profiled at Afrigadget.com
Thanks to the generosity of an MFA supporter, Kenyan inventor Dominic Wanjihia will be attending Maker Faire Africa. Dominic, who first came to the anonymous donor’s attention through an article published on AfriGadget in 2008, describes himself as, “an inventor of appropriate technology, environmentally friendly gadgets applicable to … the empowerment of rural people.” Among his inventions are:
- The Malaria Integrated Vector Management (IVM) Disc
- An evaporative cooler
- A solar food dryer
- A food smoker for meat and fish
- A shallow well – deep well water pump
- An eco-friendly pest exterminator, mainly for moles and termites
We’re looking forward to meeting Dominic in August and expect that he will benefit greatly from the opportunity to interact with other appropriate technology inventors like Amy Smith of the International Development Design Summit.
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.
Maker Faire Africa logo winner:
The final logo was chosen because of how versatile it was for MFA. Maker Faire Africa represents a lot of different types of people, pastimes and projects. Having the imagery be more than just one type of gadget or practice seemed like a better fit. The four different colored icons could be used for multiple types of branding purposes.
We almost chose the windmill because of the story it tells. What it really is is a silhouette of William’s Windmill, a story that has garnered a lot of attention due to the youth and ingenuity of William Kamkwamba. It’s a little rough around the edges, just like the windmill – but it works, has meaning and tells the story of so many other inventors, tinkerers and micro-entrepreneurs across a vast and complicated continent.
This last week we’ve been running a competition to create the Maker Faire Africa logo over at 99designs. It’s been a lot of fun, with a lot of great entries. Here are just the top rated ones, the 3 with check marks are the finalists.
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