Repurpose Schoolbags

South African upcycled solar satchels

Repurpose Schoolbags, from all-female South African green innovation start-up Rethaka, is a line of recycled school satchels that double as solar lamps – a multi-faceted product designed to address multiple problems that face African communities.

Problem number one. Light.

Across rural Africa, many households struggle to light their homes. Electricity is sparse (or at best, unreliable) and most families cannot afford to use kerosene burning lamps on a regular basis. Without lights at home, children can’t study after dark, which, as you’d expect, is a significant handbrake on their learning and development.

With the Repurpose Schoolbag, Rethaka founders Thato Kgatlhanye and Rea Ngwane have designed an innovative and elegantly simple solution to this problem, taking inspiration from the daily routine of schoolchildren in their hometown of Rustenburg. The Repurpose Schoolbag has an integrated solar panel, which charges up while the owner carries the satchel around in the daytime. Then, in the evening, the panel transforms into a solar lantern, providing light for the children in the household to do their homework after dark. With up to 12 hours output from a full charge, this solar lantern is a reliable, affordable and eco-friendly alternative to kerosene burning lamps.

Problem number two. Safety.

For children in rural areas, getting to school safely can be dangerous. Many kids have to make the long walk to school before dawn, along poorly-lit roads where they are barely visible to drivers. The Repurpose Schoolbag incorporates retro-reflective materials that make the wearer easier to spot in low light and therefore safer on their walk to school.

Problem number three. Plastic.

Many African countries lack an effective infrastructure for managing waste, so used and discarded plastic products tend to end up strewn along roadsides and coastlines. This isn’t just an environmental hazard, it’s an economic one, costing developing countries an estimated $1.27 billion a year in lost revenue for the fishing, shipping and tourism industries.

But, Rethaka are doing their bit to change things. Each Repurpose Schoolbag is made from 20 recycled plastic bags, which are sanitised and bonded into a high-quality, durable, waterproof textile. Even the off-cuts of the plastic textile are integrated into the bag’s design so no new plastic waste is generated in the assembly process.

This innovative and multi-faceted venture is a great example of private enterprise stepping up to tackle social infrastructure challenges that African governments are not engaging with. And recycling is one area where private African ingenuity is flourishing, with a number of inspiring waste recycling projects springing up across the continent, including QAMP, a community of makers repurposing e-waste in Ghana’s Agbogbloshie (the world’s largest waste electronics dump). And it’s perhaps with this fertile environment for their ideas in mind that Rethaka are looking to expand Repurpose Schoolbags to another three African countries in the next five years.

Rethaka delivers Repurpose Schoolbags to the children in rural communities who need them by pairing corporate and individual donors with disadvantaged schools. To learn more about their work or to support their efforts, visit http://www.repurposeschoolbags.com.

 All photographs courtesy Rethaka. Images copyright Roxy Klein.

Project Daniel

3D-printing prosthetics for amputees in South Sudan

Project Daniel is a remarkable initiative from Californian healthcare technologists Not Impossible Labs aiming to restore humanity for amputees in South Sudan by establishing Africa’s first 3D-printing prosthetics lab and training facility in the war-torn country.

It started with a 14-year old cattle Sudanese farmer called Daniel Omar from the Nuba Mountains in South Kordofan, a disputed region on the Sudan / South Sudan border where the decades-long conflict between the Khartoum government and Southern separatists still continues today. One day in March 2012, Daniel’s hands and parts of his arms were blown-off in a Sudanese Air Force bombing raid while he was out tending his family’s cattle. Daniel was rushed to a local hospital and thanks to the efforts of Dr. Tom Catena, an American surgeon working in the Nuba Mountains since 2008, he survived his injuries.

But without the use of his hands, Daniel saw little hope for his future. “Without hands, I can’t do anything,” he said. “I’m going to make such hard work for family in the future. If I could have died, I would have.” Daniel was under no illusions about the bleak reality that faces amputees and people with other debilitating physical and mental conditions in poor communities across Africa: one of exclusion and deprivation, due to social stigma or their families simply not having the resources to care for them.

After reading an article about Daniel, Mick Ebeling, founder of Not Impossible Labs, a Venice, California-based design and technology company that collaborates on pioneering medical technology projects, saw an opportunity to leverage his expertise and his network to help him. He first assembled an international team of experts in prosthetics, 3D-printing and neuroscience (including Rich van As, the South African inventor of the 3D-printed Robohand) to collaborate on the design for affordable 3D-printed prostheses. Then, in late 2013, having sourced funding from two global technology and engineering brands, he arrived in the Nuba Mountains to set up a 3D-printing lab and print a prosthetic arm for Daniel.

With his new arm, 16 year old Daniel was able to feed himself for the first time in two years. The prosthetic is by no means a like for like replacement – it doesn’t offer Daniel the same degree of dexterity or strength as the limb he lost – but it has restored a large degree of the independence and dignity that was taken from him. And with Not Impossible Labs committing to share their prostheses’ specifications free and open-source, the door is open to designers and makers around the world to improve the device’s functionality.

What Ebeling and his team did for Daniel was remarkable, but it was only the beginning. From the outset, the team’s vision had been to bring the technology they developed for Daniel to scale and to help the many thousands facing the same monumental challenges as Daniel in South Sudan (where civil war has left around 50,000 amputees) and across the developing world. “Help One. Help Many”, as Not Impossible Labs put it.

With Daniel on board, as well Dr. Catena, the team set up a workshop in a local hospital to train local doctors and clinicians – many of whom had little or no experience with computers – in 3D-printing prostheses, so that they could make prosthetics available to other amputees in South Sudan.

Once the training was complete, in late November 2013, Ebeling and his team returned to California, leaving behind two 3D printers and a stash of supplies. Within days of his return, Ebeling had an email from the team in Nuba with pictures of the arms that they had already made. Today, the lab prints one prostethic per week. Each costs a relatively affordable $100, making prosthetic technology accessible to amputees like Daniel for the first time.

The Nuba lab is the first of its kind in the world. The thought alone that such sophisticated technological manufacturing is happening right now in one of Africa’s most marginalised and least developed regions should do a lot to shatter preconceptions about what can and can’t be done in Africa.

But the real test for the team in Nuba and Not Impossible Labs will be to show that this technology can be sustained in Africa. Ebeling continues to supply the lab with filament (the raw material for 3D printing), but he acknowledges that this is not a sustainable in the long-term and he would like to see someone develop the technology to make filament from recycled material. This sounds very much like a job for Africa’s burgeoning maker community. With technological expertise on the rise throughout Africa and vast stocks of e-waste sitting in dumps across the continent, waiting to be repurposed, you wouldn’t bet against an African solution to this problem.

To learn more about Project Daniel and Not Impossible Labs, visit http://www.notimpossiblelabs.com.

Photos courtesy Not Impossible Labs (http://www.NotImpossibleNow.com).

Artlantique

Upcycled furniture from West African fishing boats

Artlantique is a Barcelona-based design studio working with local craftsmen in Dakar, Senegal to produce upcycled furniture using wood salvaged from traditional West African fishing boats. Founded by Spanish designer Ramon Llonch, Artlantique’s furniture takes inspiration from the beautifully decorated fishing vessels found all along West Africa’s coastline and the culture of recycling and repurposing everyday objects that abounds in many African societies.

Artlantique’s process starts with sourcing disused “pirogue” canoes (as they are known in Senegal) from the fisherman in Yoff, a coastal district of Dakar. Artlantique’s team of local craftsmen then expertly transform each pirogue into an individual piece of furniture – a table, a sideboard or maybe a chest – with the type of piece depending on each boat’s design and how much of its wood is in salvageable condition. None of the wood used in their furniture is treated.

At the heart of Artlantique’s design philosophy is a deep respect for the individuality of each pirogue – “each design is unique, as no two boats are ever the same.” This is as much true of the boats’ decoration – each one is a vibrant mosaic of geometric patterns, spiritual messages and traditional symbols conceived by its owner – as the story their weathered hulls tell of a life on the sea.

In reviving disused pirogues, Artlantique are doing much more than producing beautiful and unique pieces of furniture. They are also generating new economic opportunities for the craftsmen who get their hands back on the boats at the end of their useful life, reducing waste through an innovative repurposing of materials – something Artlantique recognise as “a way of life, not a fashion” for African societies – and bringing traditional African craft and design to a broader audience.

To see their furniture and to find out more about their work and vision, including where you can buy their pieces, visit www.artlantique.com.

All photos courtesy Artlantique.

Kéré Architecture

Building world-class structures with mud and community

Kéré Architecture is an international architectural practice founded in 2005 by Diébédo Francis Kéré, a German-trained Burkinabe architect, which is striving to foster sustainable building practices in Africa, particularly in Kéré’s native Burkina Faso. Kéré Architecture’s projects marry traditional building practices, local materials and community engagement to create buildings that are highly suitable to their local environment and communities and provide a model of sustainability for African architecture.

Kéré, who hails from Gando in rural Burkina Faso, a small village with no electricity and limited access to clean drinking water, came to Germany as an apprentice on a scholarship in the nineties and earned a diploma in Architecture and Engineering from the Technische Universität in Berlin in 2004. Driven by a desire to reinvest the skills and knowledge he was learning through his studies in his home community, Kéré set up a charitable organisation and sought out funding to build a school in Gando, while still studying for his diploma. He successfully raised $50,000 to finance the project and returned home to Gando to begin work.

Primary School, Gando, Burkina Faso

Completed in 2001, the Gando Primary School, which Kéré built in close partnership with his local community, is emblematic of the innovative architectural philosophy that Kéré has developed by applying the modern engineering methods he learned through his formal training to traditional Burkinabe building practices.

For the school’s construction, Kéré primarily used compressed clay bricks quarried from the local area. In a country where the vast majority of ‘modern’ buildings are built from concrete, this raised some eyebrows. Even though mud bricks compare very favourably with concrete both in terms of manufacturing costs and suitability to the region’s arid climate – concrete’s high heat retention makes for unbearably hot interior spaces – in Burkina Faso, earth carries the stigma of being a building material for the poor. The same is true across much of Africa.

Primary School, Gando, Burkina Faso

Speaking at the 2013 TedCity 2.0 Conference in New York, Kéré described the scepticism of his home community over his proposal to build a sophisticated and modern structure from traditional mud bricks: “my people build all the time with clay, but they don’t see any innovation with mud,” Kéré said. “So I had to convince everybody.”

Kéré was able to overcome his community’s misgivings by demonstrating his ideas through prototypes, engaging the community fully in construction of the project and, ultimately, by delivering a world-class mud building that fits perfectly with its environment, standing up to seasonal rains and keeping students cool in hotter conditions through a simple yet innovative ventilation system.

Primary School, Gando, Burkina Faso

Overcoming the entrenched stigmas attached to certain traditional practices and materials is key to empowering African communities to improve their communal infrastructure and quality of life. There is huge development potential in the application of the traditional skills and practices that these communities have inherited from past generations to the materials and resources that abound in their local environment. Mobilising these practices and materials together creates jobs in communities where opportunities are scarce and young people often leave in search of work. It can also deliver physical infrastructure which is both affordable – reducing dependence on high-cost, energy intensive materials – and sustainable – using methods and materials that can be maintained using local knowledge and inputs.

Library, Gando, Burkina Faso

Following on from the success of the Gando Primary School, Kéré and his practice have completed a number of further community projects in Gando – including a library and a secondary school – espousing the same principles of innovative applications of traditional practices and local materials and strong community engagement. Kéré’s work in Gando has received numerous awards and this recognition has spurred the growth of his practice and the development of projects throughout Burkina Faso and across Africa (and beyond). Among these is the Centre for Earth Architecture in Mopti, Mali, an institution set up to educate African communities on ancient practices of building with earth in Africa and the innovative new applications of these practices being championed by Kéré and his peers.

Centre for Earth Architecture, Mopti, Mali

To support Kéré Architecture’s work and for more information on current and upcoming projects, visit www.kerearchitecture.com.

All photos courtesy Kéré Architecture.

AAKS

Designer handbags handcrafted in Ghana

AAKS, the brainchild of an English-trained Ghanaian fashion entrepreneur, is a new label that is working with artisan weavers in Northern Ghana to make modern handcrafted raffia bags for the international luxury goods market and to change global perceptions of handcrafted African products.

While working in the UK fashion industry after completing her degree in fashion at Kingston University, Akosua Afriyie-Kumi saw a gap in the market for an ethically crafted designer handbag and an opportunity to connect artisans in her homeland with the international fashion market. So she returned to Ghana to make it happen.

AAKS’ bags elegantly blend the traditional and the modern, unmistakably African in their design with a luxurious finish. The bags are made from raffia, a straw-like material from a species of palm tree indigenous to tropical Africa that women in Northern Ghana have been using to weave baskets for generations, hand-dyed in vibrant colours and accentuated with leather touches for a contemporary look and feel.

 

Craftsmanship goes to the heart of AAKS’ product and Afriyie-Kumi’s vision for her brand. Each bag is hand-woven by a group of artisan women in Bolgatanga, in North-East Ghana, a process that takes around a week. The skills and techniques that produce this impeccable handiwork are the ancestral legacy of these women, but like many other traditional crafts across the African continent, their survival is under threat. From globalisation – the influx of new foreign products, methods and materials. And from urbanisation – the steady flow of young Ghanaians from the dusty North to the bustling metropolises of Accra and Kumasi in search of economic opportunity. Through their commitment to this heritage craft and to showcasing its quality internationally through their stylish, modern interpretations, AAKS are helping to preserve this traditional skill in Ghana and enable the women who practise it to make a sustainable living.

AAKS pitch themselves as an ethical fashion brand and take a holistic view of what it means to be ‘ethical’ – it’s not just the authentic traditional craftsmanship of their products and the fair treatment of the artisans who make them, but also the sustainable harvesting and use of their raw materials. It’s a value proposition that carries huge cachet in today’s international fashion market and, along with their commitment to quality, is what makes AAKS a model for others looking to preserve traditional African crafts.

To learn more and for information on where you can buy AAKS’ bags, visit http://www.aaksonline.com.

All photos © AAKS

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The BRCK

The modem, re-imagined for Africa

The BRCK is a mobile WiFi device from Nairobi-based tech company Ushahidi that is designed to overcome the barriers to reliable internet connectivity in Africa and the developing world.

Ushahidi initially made waves in the international technology community by developing software for crowdsourcing and mapping data that has been used in disaster response efforts worldwide, before turning their attention to Africa’s connectivity challenges.

The Ushahidi team looked at the modems that they were using in Kenya and saw that these were built for a very different context – one where internet is ubiquitous and the electricity doesn’t sporadically cut out – to the reality of unreliable power and patchy network coverage facing most African users. So, with funds raised from the Kickstarter community, they developed the BRCK – the modem, re-imagined for Africa.

The BRCK is many things to many people: a “backup generator” for the internet; a primary means of connecting; a mobile modem. The common denominator of the various functions the BRCK offers its users is the reduction of their reliance on an unreliable power grid. The BRCK can connect to cellular networks (as well as ethernet or WiFi) and has a battery life of eight hours, allowing users to stay or get online whether they are in a black-out or off the grid entirely.

The BRCK is designed to travel. It is built rugged (no prizes for guessing where it gets it name) and can be charged from a solar panel or car battery, as well as more conventional sources, so it can be used in tough conditions and remote areas. With a built-in global sim and a port for a local sim, as well as cloud functionality that enables it to calibrate to networks in over 140 different countries, the BRCK also works across borders, which is a compelling value proposition for travelling users on a continent with little or no harmonisation between the networks in neighbouring countries.

With the BRCK, Ushahidi are leveraging the success of mobile phone in Africa and the vast cellular network it has spawned to bring internet to even the most remote parts of Africa. And, encouragingly for them, they are coming at this task from the same angle that made the mobile story so successful: they are playing to Africa’s strengths. Mobile was able to achieve tremendous penetration in Africa by utilising something Africa had an abundance of – space to build network towers – to get around its complete lack of fixed-line infrastructure. Now the BRCK is using Africa’s latest strength – its pervasive, high-quality cellular network – to get around the limitations of its power infrastructure.

The Ushahidi team have a saying: “if it works in Africa, it will work anywhere”. You could also say that African technology is inclusive technology. By designing for users who face the toughest connectivity challenges, Ushahidi have made a product that can be useful anywhere in the world. The global digital economy needs this kind of inclusive technology. African designers and technologists, designing for African needs, can provide it. And the BRCK – by keeping them connected, wherever they are – will help them do it.

All photos courtesy BRCK/Ushahidi.

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Yinka Ilori

Upcycled furniture with an African soul

Yinka Ilori is a London-based designer who creates distinctive upcycled furniture inspired by traditional Nigerian parables. Ilori, a graduate of London Metropolitan University’s Product Design and Furniture degree program, set up his own furniture design studio in London’s East End after completing his degree. Still a young designer, his work is already receiving international recognition and has been showcased at exhibitions and fairs in London, New York, Berlin and, most recently, Lagos.

Since 2011, Ilori has worked to assemble a collection of unique and striking pieces of furniture, each telling a different story from his Nigerian heritage and espousing his passion for sustainability. He works exclusively with vintage or disused furniture, reworking these “pre-loved” (as he puts it) pieces, using traditional fabrics from Nigeria for upholstery and a vibrant colour palette to infuse them with a uniquely African flair and visual narrative. Each design is guided by the original form of the piece and the story Ilori wants it to tell, but nevertheless bears his unmistakably African signature style.

The outcome is not only a range of pieces that exquisitely blend traditional African expression with contemporary design, but also an important statement against hyper-consumption and waste. Ilori describes himself as “deeply aware [of] and passionately against the unnecessary waste of modern consumer societies” and his works reflect this philosophy, beautifully illustrating the huge potential for giving new life to damaged and discarded furniture. If there’s a more compelling (or better looking) argument for keeping unwanted furniture off the scrapheap, we’d like to hear it!

To see more of Ilori’s work and for information on where you can buy his pieces, visit www.yinkailori.com.

Headline image © British Library. All photos of Yinka Ilori’s collection © Perrick Mouton.

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Mobius Motors

The car for Africa

Mobius Motors is a Nairobi, Kenya based carmaker producing vehicles for Africa’s mass-market who have re-imagined the car to respond to the continent’s challenging transport conditions and the limited means of many of its consumers. In October of this year, Mobius launched its first commercially-produced vehicle – the Mobius Two – in Kenya, aimed principally at the local entrepreneurs helping to bring hard to reach communities into the economic fold by providing distribution and transportation services to customers in these areas.

Anyone who has travelled outside of Africa’s major urban centres will be familiar with the dire state of the roads in many areas. The majority of rural roads are unpaved, uneven, littered with rocks and can be completely impassable in rainy seasons. And where there are paved roads, they are often so degraded that even the potholes have potholes! This challenging transportation environment poses huge difficulties for the supply of basic goods and services (such as medical supplies and public transport) to consumers in isolated areas and for the ability of people in these areas to participate in economic activity and trade beyond their own communities.

While transport infrastructure is a hot sector for many investors putting money into Africa – and this undoubtedly an encouraging trend – these funds are going almost exclusively into major (and, more often than not, urban) transport projects and will not meaningfully affect the mobility of marginalised communities. Rural transport conditions are not going to improve any time soon, so rural communities need suitable transport for the here and now.

The vast majority of vehicles currently available on African markets are imported from Asia and Europe. These cars are not built for African conditions – they are unreliable on degraded roads and costly to maintain, with quality spare parts often unavailable locally; import duties can also make them prohibitively expensive for most African buyers. In short, they lack the necessary reliability and affordability to make them a viable transport solution for entrepreneurs operating in marginalised areas and the consumers they serve.

It is these two related needs of reliability and affordability that Mobius is aiming to address with the Mobius Two, a car built for African roads and priced for the budgets of lower-income buyers.

The Mobius Two is engineered to be rugged – with a chassis capable of handling the stresses of driving on degraded roads and robust suspension – and designed to be easily configurable for transportation of heavy goods and people, with the varied needs of local entrepreneurs in mind. A focus on functionality over non-essential features (such as air-con and non-essential instruments) has enabled Mobius to market the Mobius Two at a relatively affordable KES 950,000 (around $10,500) – this is comparable to the local price for a seven year-old sedan, making it the cheapest new vehicle currently available in Kenya. The Mobius Two is also comparatively cheap to run, thanks to a fuel efficiency that betters that of most vehicles in the same carrying class in the East-African market as well as Mobius’ efforts to build a dedicated after-sales network, including service centres stocking a full range of spare parts.

Ultimately, Mobius’ vision extends beyond making a vehicle that delivers outstanding value for African consumers and entrepreneurs; they are aiming to (in their own words) “build a platform for mobility” by also providing financing and business advice to local entrepreneurs in the transport sector. Through their commitment to empowering local entrepreneurs, Mobius are creating huge systemic and developmental value in East Africa – improving access to goods and services for consumers in marginalised areas and connecting these people to economic opportunities beyond their own communities.

Mobius is currently distributing the Mobius Two in the Meru region of Kenya with plans to expand distribution throughout Kenya and across East Africa in the near future. To learn more, visit www.mobiusmotors.com.

All photos courtesy of Mobius Motors

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