Carrying water. Why Designers Need To Stop Feeling Sorry For Africa. Earlier this year, the Cooper-Hewitt wrapped up "Design with the Other 90%: Cities," the second in a series of exhibitions intended to demonstrate how design can address the world’s most critical issues. This time around, the focus was on the challenges created by rapid urban growth in informal settlements. Some highlights were Digital Drum in Kampala, Uganda, a solar-powered information access point made from two durable, low-cost oil drums welded together, rugged keyboards, solar panels, and low-power tablets; a large-scale oven that uses trash as fuel to power a communal cooking facility in Kibera, Nairobi; and M-Pesa, a money-transfer service that enables urban migrants in Kenya to send money back to their villages via a mobile device.
The designers represented were local. But locals aren’t leading the pack when it comes to designing products for the bottom of the pyramid. But the road to hell may well be paved with good intentions. There are many exceptions, of course. Home | Cooper Hewitt. Products :: Super MoneyMaker. MoneyMaker Max The MoneyMaker Max (MMM) is a unique, high-quality, human powered treadle irrigation pump, designed by KickStart International in 2011 and launched in 2012. With the look of a modified Stairmaster, the easy operation and high flow rate of the MMM allows farmers to irrigate up to 2 acres of land per day. It is a lower-cost and more cost-effective solution than motorized irrigation pumps which are hard to fuel, maintain and repair in rural Africa and have a lot of recurring costs.
The MMM weighs just 16kgs, pulls water from depths of up to 7 meters, pushes it to the field through a pressurized hosepipe and produces a maximum pumping head of 16 meters. This enables the MMM to push water up a hill, power sprinklers and be used with a hand-held nozzle to efficiently deliver the water directly to the crops. The MMM is an improved version of KickStart’s best selling Super-MoneyMaker (SMM) treadle pump. Download a PDF version of our product brochure here. We don't throw money at a problem, we throw brains. Philips: Philanthropy by Design. How Philips, working with nonprofits, is tackling the low-tech needs of the world's poor For decades, Nirmala Shivdas Kshirsagar prepared family meals on a chula, a wood-burning oven made from mud.
The stove cost little to operate, but the 45-year-old village schoolteacher paid a price: Unruly flames frequently burned Kshirsagar's hands and feet, and smoke filled her three-room home, making breathing difficult and leaving a sooty mess on the kitchen's mud-plastered walls. It's a common problem: The U.N. estimates that smoke inhalation from indoor wood stoves kills 1.6 million people worldwide each year. So when an Indian development organization last year asked if Kshirsagar wanted to try an improved chula developed in conjunction with the Amsterdam-based electronics giant, Royal Philips Electronics (PHG), she agreed.
Conventional chulas use a single length of pipe as a chimney and can only be cleaned by climbing up on the roof. Of course, such initiatives are fraught with difficulties. Sustainable future - Chulha stove. With more than 1.6 million people dying annually due to smoke inhalation from indoor wood burning stoves, Philips Design came up with an idea to effectively tackle the problem. This was part of ‘Philanthropy by Design’ a program which looks at promoting social empowerment through knowledge sharing, creativity and co-design. Social responsibility is climbing ever higher on many corporate agendas these days. But whereas in the past companies may have given cash donations to non-governmental organizations (NGOs), a new trend is now emerging. Known generally as strategic philanthropy, it usually involves companies applying their expertise or products in sponsorship projects targeted at local communities or specific segments of the population.
The return on this participation is not measured in terms of profit, but by other indicators like an increase in brand equity and new learning to generate innovative sustainable solutions. Meaningful solutions Killer in the kitchen A collaborative effort. Wearing a Philanthropic Heart on Their Designs. Developers: ES5 builds are disabled during development to take advantage of 2x faster build times. Please see the example below or our config docs if you would like to develop on a browser that does not fully support ES2017 and custom elements. Note that as of Stencil v2, ES5 builds and polyfills are disabled during production builds. You can enable these in your stencil.config.ts file.
When testing browsers it is recommended to always test in production mode, and ES5 builds should always be enabled during production builds. This is only an experiment and if it slows down app development then we will revert this and enable ES5 builds during dev. Enabling ES5 builds during development: npm run dev --es5 For stencil-component-starter, use: npm start --es5 Enabling full production builds during development: npm run dev --prod npm start --prod Current Browser's Support: Current Browser: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:47.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/47.0. Design Philanthropy : Thought Leadership : Articles : IIDA. For a growing number of designers, social issues and crises resonate beyond newspaper headlines.
Concerns from unemployment to the AIDS epidemic are inspiring design philanthropists to roll up their sleeves and get to work — creating a new wave of humanitarian designers. “There’s a desire on the part of designers to address critical issues in the world,” says Bryan Bell, Founder and Executive Director of Raleigh, N.C. -based Design Corps, which provides affordable architectural and design services to low-income families and rural communities. Beyond the Tipping Point With distinguished designers and architects like Sergio Palleroni, Maurice Cox and Teddy Cruz leading the way, humanitarian design is poised to open new doors for designers — both those looking to advance the profession beyond its traditional borders and those who “simply want to make a name for themselves by doing something good,” Bell says. But all that has begun to change. Getting Organized Design Philanthropy Culture Change. Stefano Marzano on the urgent need for Creative leadership. Philips design inspiration - stephano marzano.
Index Awards - Philips Design, "The Chulha" Solar Off-Grid lighting solutions by Philips. Why Energy Poverty Is the Worst Kind of Poverty. I want you to try to imagine what it's like to live without electricity. It's boring, for one thing — no television, no MP3 player, no video games. And it's lonely and disconnected as well — no computer, no Internet, no mobile phone. You can read books, of course — but at night you won't have light, other than the flicker of firewood.
And about that firewood — you or someone in your family had to gather it during the day, taking you away from more productive work or schooling, and in some parts of the world, exposing you to danger. That same firewood is used to cook dinner, throwing off smoke that can turn the air inside your home far more toxic than that breathed in an industrial city. That's life for the 1.3 billion people around the planet who lack access to the grid. "Lacking access to electricity affects health, well-being and income," says Fatih Birol, the chief economist of the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Fortunately that attention is finally forthcoming. Mobile Mandate | frog. Mobile Mandate. Why Maker Faire Africa is a model for economic development. Essay Julie Lasky A day's events at Maker Faire Africa 2009 in Accra, Ghana. Photo: Nathan Cooke Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted, for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. In August 2009, a group of inventors met to share the expressions of their ingenuity — objects assembled from humble materials for comfort or entertainment. DIY, or do-it-yourself, is a vital activity in many parts of the world, with profoundly different meanings and purposes.
American DIY looks back fondly to eras such as the 1970s, when hippies and other anti-establishment members reviled machines and doted on craft. American DIY, in short, is meta-nostalgic (hankering after epochs that hankered after epochs before them), character-driven, utopian, and founded on privilege. In 2002, the German economist Wolfgang Schneider Barthold, whose work is cited by Okafor, made this analysis: New video: Juliana Rotich "Ushahidi: Powered by Open Source" Home | idlelo.net. Fundi Bots: Robotics Lab, School Clubs and Camps. Hardware hacking is what Solomon King does in Uganda, he already makes his own robots, now he’s taking that idea a little further. He’s taking it to kids, trying to get robotics into the hands of Ugandan youth through his Fundi Bots project. (Fundi is the word for technician). Their plan comes in three parts: a lab, school robotics clubs and robotics camps. That first item is important, a lab. A central place where the members of Fundi Bots can come in and find the relatively expensive tools, software and computers needed to make the robots and learn together.
It gives a hub to their spokes of activity taking place in the schools throughout the year, a much needed “club house” for the community. This idea of hardware hacking garages is something I’ve spoken about before: This is an idea that effects everyone across Africa, a space like this is accessible and usable by young and experienced, rural and urban inventors and entrepreneurs. Other Hardware Hacking News Makeshift Magazine. The biggest bottleneck to electronic commerce in East Africa | Mbugua Njihia - the mind of.
Amazon, which has been said to be the worlds largest online retailer , with custom presence in United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Japan, and China saw consumers spend more than USD 1 billion via mobile devices in the period 2009 – 2010. Africa is missing from the list of regions where Amazon has a presence and this had led to many ventures seeking to fill this glaring gap. Internet penetration in Africa has been wanting but recent investments in undersea fibre cables to boost broadband access has served to expose more consumers to the power of the internet. Access to the internet via mobile devices has also grown , with mobile access more often than not being the first touch point.
While there are many ecommerce services, few such as Kalahari from the well heeled Naspers Group would feature on common lists of well known initiatives. I am curious to hear your suggestions on a work around. The digital revolution in sub-Saharan Africa - Features. Much has been written about the role technology played in bringing social and political change across much of the Middle East and North Africa, but less is known about the technological revolution that is taking place and transforming people's lives in sub-Saharan Africa.
It is estimated that by 2015 sub-Saharan Africa will have more people with mobile phone network access than electricity access at home. People with internet and no home electricity will reach 138 million, according to the Cisco Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast for 2010-2015. This deep and rapid mobile penetration is catapulting developing countries into the 21st century and bringing new and previously unimagined opportunities. While schools in the developed world enforce strict policies to keep mobile phones out of the classroom, African schools and universities are now exploring the use of mobile technology to assist teaching. Mobile education The use of videos in the classrooms is not new in Africa.
E-learning. Open source marks a new era for African independence. A growing community across Africa is coding software to suit their own needs. This year marks the 50th anniversary of 17 African states gaining independence. Now, a wave of homegrown programmers, developers and software makers claim to be heralding a new era of African independence. Earlier this month, the Idlelo conference, organised by the Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA), brought together the continent's cleverest coding minds at Accra, in Ghana, to discuss new software opportunities in Africa. Unlike the bigger, foreign developers - who have mainly targeted the urban markets - the coders at this event looked at how to reach the rural, relatively poorer communities of Africa. In their words, they're people who know how to code, and know the continent.
Import risk The meeting was hosted at the Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT. "We have to develop and localise the applications so that they work in our own languages. "That means that you are vulnerable. Solar lamps lifting Kenyans out of poverty. 'Saving lives' with solar power Evans Wadongo is supplying Kenyans in rural areas with solar-powered LED lanternsThe free lanterns allow families to save the money they would normally spend on keroseneWadongo on being chosen as a Top 10 CNN Hero: It gives me "energy to do more" Editor's Note: CNN Heroes received more than 10,000 nominations from 100 countries, and a Blue Ribbon Panel selected the Top 10 CNN Heroes for the year.
Voting for the CNN Hero of the Year continues through November 18 (6 a.m. ET) at CNNHeroes.com. The winner will be announced at "CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute," which airs Thanksgiving night, November 25, at 8 ET. (CNN) -- Evans Wadongo, 23, invented a way for rural families in Kenya to replace smoky kerosene and firelight with solar power. Wadongo's work earned him a spot as one of CNN's Top 10 Heroes for 2010. Q: Where were you when you got the call that you'd been selected as a Top 10 CNN Hero? I wish to thank the Blue Ribbon Panel for choosing me. Literacy Bridge. Samasource. KOMAZA. Lifeplayer, a Wind-Up MP3 Player For Developing Countries | Gadget Lab. The Lifeplayer in Kenya. Photo Lifeline Energy This big, ugly gadget is the LifePlayer, and it can change people’s lives. It’s a solar-powered five-band radio and MP3 player designed to be used as a teaching aid in the developing world.
Currently, the units are being tested in Rwanda where the government has decided to switch the nation’s language from French to English. The LifePlayer can be run from either a removable solar cell or by turning a hand-crank. The device also performs another key role: it can charge cellphones. You can’t buy one but then it’s not meant for you: an iPod Nano and a speaker can perform the same duties. Lifeplayer [Lifeline.
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