In an earlier post, I covered the work of a Ghana inventor named Nana Owusu Acheampong who was using D-Cells and a custom made wooden battery holder to charge cell phones. On a recent visit to Bonsaaso, a small village about 100KM south of Kumasi, the great pleasure of meeting Mr. Acheampong and seeing first hand some of the projects he has been working on.
Cheap Chinese LEDs, which are pervasive in Mali, have not yet reached this part of Ghana so Mr. Acheampong and others have started to make their own LED light arrays powered by wooden box battery holders. Asked how he came about the idea for the battery boxes, Mr. Acheampong explained that observed his radio worked that way so he “took the power out of his radio”.
I’ll let the photos speak for themselves. It was a thrill to meet someone so truly passionate and excited by his own creations. He is exactly the kind of person who with a bit of support, access to better materials and little extra electrical training could help light up a community.
LED light made from MTN advertising and LEDs purchased from Kumasi.
Used CD helps reflect the light from the LEDs.
How Mr. Acheampong lights his room. He no longer purchases kerosene he claims.
Note: Rural Africa still relies heavily on disposable D-Cells for much of its energy. They are popular for their low purchase price, however, they are expensive on a $/AH basis and environmental standpoint. Thus, the idea of creating small businesses around rechargeable D-Cells intrigues me. It seems like an obvious idea but I’ve yet to see it done. If you know of examples of where this is being attempted please let me know.
One of the real highlights thus far at Maker Faire Africa 2009 has been the presence of William Kamkwamba. William is a remarkable young inventor from rural Malawi, who at the age of 14, built his first windmill out of scrap parts (including his father’s bike) after learning about one in a book. William’s simple message of not letting your goals be defined by constraints is inspirational and resonated particularly powerful with the other African maker’s in attendance at Maker Faire.
Expect to hear more from William this year as he is about to release a book, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, which comes out September 29th. I expect it to be very popular as his is a story that particularly deserves telling.
To learn more about William and find out about his important work please visit: www.williamkamkwamba.com
I am writing this from Kisumu, Kenya. I’m here to follow up on the progress being made with the RapidResponse Pilot and to work with Dickson Ukanga, a talented young Kenyan programmer, I just hired.
It’s been about a week now since the Seacom cable has come online and according to Dickson Safaricom users are already seeing the benefit. Today, I also noticed for the first time that Mountain Dew, the drink synonomous to late night coding and considered by some code-junkies “an essential ingredient for successful computer programming“, is now available in shops at Kenya too. Coincidence? I think not. =)
What encourages me is that African programmers increasingly have access to the tools critical to compete: cheap computers, good internet, solid computer science university programs, time to code and increased inclusion to global geek culture both actual through bar camps and symbolic with Mountain Dew. Cheaper and faster Internet should also help translate into a larger market for local Internet based services critical for growing the African software industry.
I think it is time to be excited. As the barriers to entry continue to tumble, the number of really good programmers coming out of places like Nairobi, Kampala, Accra and Dakar will only increase. It will still take some time but at least but at least Africa is starting to overcome the infrastructure challenges that have choked ICT growth in Africa. It’s hard to train to compete when you are sipping through a straw. The only thing ultimately inhibiting African programmers from making their mark on a global (and local) stage is hard work and brainpower.
That’s a bet I’m willing to take.
Note:
If you are interested in finding programmers in Africa please checkout this job board at:
I’m very proud to announce RapidResponse, a mHealth platform built with RapidSMS. This is a project that I have been working to develop at the Earth Institute with Professor Vijay Modi in collaboration with UNICEF Innovation team and a number of other partners for the Millennium Villages Project.
The idea for RapidResponse originated from a conversation with Jessica Fanzo, an amazing nutritionist that I am lucky enough to work with. We spoke at length about a program called Community-Based Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM) that she was interested in implementing in the Millennium Villages. At that time, I was increasingly involved with the UNICEF team on the development of RapidSMS. CMAM struck me as a great example of medical system that we could support with technology. I wanted to avoid the trap of creating a use case around a technology that we were keen to deploy. As a result, RapidResponse was originally designed to provide support for the management of a CMAM program deployed primarily by Community Health Workers (CHWs). It has since morphed to include support for malaria and diarrhea screening two other major killers of children under five in Africa.
What excites me most about RapidResponse, besides the impact I hope it will have in health, is that it begins to show us the full potential and range of application that an SMS based approach with server-side logic can provide. RapidResponse is more than just data collection providing decision-tree based diagnosis support, workflow management, and core messaging services. It helps automate and facilitate and coordinate the activities of field based health care staff and supports a powerful alert system that has the potential to help reduce gaps in treatment.
RapidResponse is very much a collaborative effort between a number of groups and individuals who have all contributed tremendously to the progress made thus far. The UNICEF Innovations Team have been fully engaged with this project from the offset and have provided along with many other things generous programming support. Their continued engagement will be key to RapidResponse’s growth. Also highly influential was the incredible work of a group of SIPA students from Columbia University, who showed that RapidSMS could effectively be used to monitor malnutrition in children in Malawi. Working closely in particular with Ray Short and Sean Blaschke, we incorporated the needs of their system and what we were developing for MVP into a single, unified malnutrition monitoring platform. Special thanks are due to the MVP Health team and in particular to Dr. James Wariero and Saleena Subaiya who provided the on-the-ground insight of the how the system should work. Jessica Fanzo and Roger Sodjinou, the nutrition and malnutrition treatment experts, provided guidance in developing the system around the CMAM protocol. Lastly, thanks are due Schuyler Erle and Andy McKay who transformed concepts into code, and the growing RapidSMS open source programmer community who have built the pieces to make all of this possible.
I realize developing a system is meaningless if we can’t show impact. We are in the initial faces of piloting RapidResponse to support the delivery of CMAM by CHWs in one of our sites in Kenya. While the pilot is in its early stages, I am encouraged by the initial results that we hope to be able to share through updates in the upcoming months.
In the mean time, our hope is to continue to build RapidResponse as an open mHealth platform that will ultimately enable partners in the field to deliver health services more effectively and efficiently. Our hope is to build a flexible platform around which a coalition of partners can coalesce and to which they can contribute. Through the actual implementation of projects in the field, we are hoping to drive resources into the further development and refinement of a system that will benefit all partners. We envision a system that is flexible enough for any group to customize to their individual use case (there will always be the need) and that will eventually be easy enough to configure (via web interface) that grass route groups or government agencies with limited resources could deploy on their own. We realize this is a grand vision (and we’re not the first with this aim) but we feel that by taking an open approach we’ve started to put together a solid foundation, both from a technical and partner standpoint, to make this possible.
Kevin Rehak, an MBA Student at Columbia University that I am working with, recently sent me this photo of an innovative approach to cell phone charging in Ghana. Using a charging system he made himself, 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.
Obviously, for a number of reasons this solution is not ideal. The phones charge very quickly (~10 minutes) but are probably receiving too high of a current which damages batteries. From an environmental standpoint, this method is particularly wasteful. All this is to highlight both the huge demand for cell phone charging in rural areas in Africa and a general lack of cheap and efficient technologies available for entrepreneurs like Mr. Acheampong.
Tough Stuff Solar Panel
Luckily, a lot of new products are beginning to enter the market that should help change this. The Tough Stuff Solar Panel a 1W (5.6V, 174mA) highly robust, amorphous panel that is ideal for charging individual cell phones is a particularly exciting example of this. More important then spec, the Tough Stuff Panel (with cell connectors) comes in at about €10 or less per panel retail. The retail price will obviously have to be a bit more but if you consider existing charging practices (see above) even a $20 price-point seems very viable.
I had a really interesting discussion at work with my boss Vijay Modi and some colleagues about the real costs of an off-grid “solar” systems. The perception is often that solar panels make up the bulk of the cost of an off-grid system. The reality, however, with any time horizon over three years is that the cost of batteries will be the biggest determining factor of cost over time. It is for this reason, that Mark Hankin’s argues that off-grid system should not be called “solar systems” but rather battery-based systems.
If you consider that most off-grid systems in Africa fail after three years, this term is unfortunately even more appropriate.
Great story by Subsarahska on the DR Congo Inland Fiber cable. Love the part about Kabila going himself to state that the cable was made out of glass and worthless to steal. It then goes on to explain how earlier 75KM of copper cable was stolen.. in one night.
WhiteAfrican makes an impassioned argument on how to support high-tech entrepreneurship in Africa and sheds some interesting light on how the new Gmail Google Preview feature was inspired by Google Employees who experienced the glory of an Ethiopian Cyber Café
Maker Faire Africa dates are set for August 14-16th in Accra. They are actively looking both for makers and sponsors. There is an option on their website to make individual, small donations if you want to help.
Interesting post on Twitter Data: an open proposal for embedding data in twitter messages. Includes some interesting ideas that could also apply to SMS.
Last but not least, AfroPop’s Summer Concert Schedule. Some great African groups coming through the States and Canada this summer that arent’ to be missed.
Here is a brief talk I gave at a recent research showcase at Columbia. In it I discuss how we brought Internet connectivity to Ruhiira our rural community in Uganda using a large wifi network that we put in place with the help of Inveneo. The network is currently being used to connect about 5 clinics, 3 schools and several other community institutions to the nearest Internet connection 35KM away. As a local intranet, the network is adding tremendous value by enabling free VOIP calls between sites and is also being used by the clinics to facilitate a central medical records system.
In the future, I will try and provide a much more detailed overview of this project but for now it provides a glance at how wifi can be used to bring connectivity when commercial options are not currently available.
Part of my job over the past couple of years has entailed doing energy sizing for off-grid photo voltaic (PV) solar systems. To help with this I have relied largely on an excel-based solar calculator that I created. I thought it might be useful to share.
Solar Toolkit - excel based solar calculator. Last updated 05.03.09. Please see instructions for proper usage.
Solar Radiation Chart - useful for estimating peak solar of your location (# hours of day of strong sunlight)
Please note: this is NOT intended to replace getting a detailed power estimate from a local solar expert who can best take in account the local conditions. This is more intended to help you with estimates when you are looking to bring a project off-grid. Please use at your own risk.
Solar Costing
A common question relating to PV systems is what does it cost? A technique commonly used is to estimate the cost at $10-per-watt. This includes the cost of the panels, batteries, charge controller and wiring - installed. A 100W system, for example, would cost you around $1,000. You can begin to see why we tend to get so nutty about power efficiency! =)
Note: In Africa we’ve found this price to vary widely from $10 to over $15 due to different policies on import taxation, transport costs and varying levels of local competition. Also, $10-per-watt is for the initial setup of a PV system only. To consider issues of sustainability, it is important to take in account that batteries will need to be replaced every 2-3 years and the charge controller ever five. If you wish to factor in replacement costs, to keep the system operational, $15-per-watt should be used.
Inspired by Jan Chipcase, I put together the following photo montage covering the ever increasing number of cheap Chinese LED lights that are transforming the way people access lighting. There are a lot of amazing NGOs doing work to address the issue of rural household lighting but I think they are at best a fill-gap to an existing market gap. The mass market solution (LED + small rechargeable battery + 1 W solar panel) that will really make a difference will be Chinese and at a price that will encourage extremely fast adoption rates. This is evident from the introduction of LED flashlights in Mali that completely took over the market in less then six months.
I also document the common way most cell phone charging is done in an off-grid environment. While it may not the be the most power efficient or battery safe method it works and is both cheap to the supplier and consumer. Used car batteries you can see are the “power lines” in a lot of African villages that form the basis of distributed power distribution.
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