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From Cell Phone Charging to LED Lights

Aug 31, 2009 Africa, Ghana, Innovators, Power, Technology

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.

William Kamkwamba Windmill Maker - Maker Faire Africa 2009

Aug 15, 2009 Africa, Innovation, Innovators, Malawi, Power

 

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

Introducing RapidResponse a mHealth Platform built with RapidSMS

Jul 9, 2009 Innovation, Kenya, RapidSMS, SMS, mHealth

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.

RapidResponse Malnutrition Report

For a complete technical overview please visit the RapidResponse project page on www.rapidsms.org

C-Cell Mobile Phone Charging in Ghana

Jun 24, 2009 Africa, Ghana, Innovation, Mobile, Power, Solar

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.

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.

Also see related post on 12V Cell Phone Charging Practices in Mali

MVP ICT “Village Network” Talk

May 14, 2009 Connectivity, ICT4D, MVP, Talk, Uganda, Wifi

Matt Berg - Millennium Villages Student Research Showcase from Earth Institute on Vimeo.

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.

Off-Grid Solar Calculator

May 3, 2009 Africa, Power, Resource, Solar

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)
• Solar Radiation Chart 2 - includes optimal PV inclination angles for facing the sun

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.

LED Lights and 12V Cell Phone Charging Mali

Apr 28, 2009 Africa, ICT4D, Mali, Mobile, Technology

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.

12V Mali Photo Montage (sorry for the large file size 10.4MB)

Pictures from Mali

Mar 16, 2009 Mali, Photography

Mali from BuildAfrica on Vimeo.

Here is a montage of pictures I took during the two years I lived in Mali - in my mind one of the most beautiful and culturally rich places you could have the fortune to experience.

Leveraging Internet with Radio

Feb 25, 2009 Africa, Case Study, Connectivity, Geekcorps, ICT, ICT4D, Mali

Within ICT4D practice, there seems to be little debate, at least when you look at implementation funding, that bringing Internet to rural areas in places like Africa that had been previously “cut off” is good idea and potentially transformative.   Until recently more recently, “bringing the Internet” has meant usually plunking down a VSAT, setting up a small computer lab and hoping someday that one day it will become sustainable.

Despite being by and large, unsustainable, such projects are still difficult and are important from a symbolic standpoint and do serve as a temporary bridge in some ways for the digital divide.  The problem that is even harder to address is accessibility.  How many people actually get to access the Internet on the computers and when then they do are they using it in a way that’s socially beneficial?

Eventually low cost smart phones that are able to access the Internet in an acceptable way (think <$100 Chinese iPhone), will represent a paradigm shift in the way Africans connect to the Internet.   Until then, a community radio is probably the best way to make the information on the Internet accessible to rural communities.

The following is a story about a project in I worked on during my time at Geekcorps Mali which helps illustrate this point.

A Weekly Connection to the Outside World

Aboubacrine Touré admits to having become somewhat of a local celebrity in Bourem Inaly, a remote community about 30 kilometers west of Tombouctou on the Niger river in northern Mali. While he is the director of the local community radio station, Radio Beeray (Respect), he is best known throughout the region as the host of Journal of Journals, a weekly radio news program that airs every Sunday night.

Using an IESC Geekcorps Desert PC equipped with an R-BGAN Satellite Modem, Aboubacrine connects to the Internet in search of local and regional news that would be of interest to his listening audience. Over the span of the week, he carefully summarizes the news which he presents in the local language Songhai during his hour-long broadcast.

Radio Beeray’s ability to connect to the Internet is a direct result of USAID Mali’s Communication for Development objective whose aim is “to make it easier for Malians to get access to information that will enable them to improve the quality of their lives.” In partnership with USAID Mali, IESC Geekcorps set out to develop an affordable solution for providing Internet access to its partner radio stations at sites across the remote desert region of northern Mali. Based on VIA components, Geekcorps designed the Desert PC to withstand the extreme heat and dust of a harsh desert environment. Additionally, its power draw is less then a 60W light bulb, which makes the PC ideal for an environment where solar is the primary source of energy. An R-GBAN system along with bandwidth limiting software can be paired with the Desert PC to provide an affordable medium for a community to connect to the outside world.

Since Aboubacrine started the program in early 2006, its reception from the local community has been very positive. He knows of many people who even bought radios for the first time so their families could tune into his program and be connected to the outside world through the news.

When a technical difficulty caused the radio station’s Internet connection to be down temporarily, he was amazed by the number of people who wrote in to complain.

Initially, Journal of Journals was met with a lot of skepticism. Since most people in his remote village had never heard of the Internet, he was often accused of, “making the news up!” Aboubacrine explains. This was especially the case earlier this year when Radio Beeray broke the news that Tuareg rebels had attacked the northern outpost of Kidal. Most people simply did not believe that such an attack was possible and were particularly doubtful since no one from neighboring Timbuktu could corroborate the report. The next day when the Malian national press picked up the story, Radio Beeray skeptics became dedicated listeners.

While he primarily uses the Internet to email and get current news (especially stories relating to tensions in the north and the Ivory Coast civil war), Aboubacrine often has requests to look up things like telephone country codes or weather forecasts. Additionally, the encyclopedia that came installed with the computer has been very popular with local students. Mr. Touré, who also works as a teacher at the local school, admits that access to the Internet has even had a positive effect on his lesson planning. While it will likely be years before the average Malian has access to the web, Radio Beeray shows the Internet remains a powerful tool for helping to bridge the information gap.

There are some key take aways from this project that are important to share.   From a technical standpoint, it was a tremendous success.  Using a lot of clever engineering, we were able to limit the radio’s bandwidth consumption to about 200K/day or $6 (1MB) a week, which the Radio Director was able to use to connect his community to the outside world - certainly a lot of “bang-for-the-byte”.  Despite getting the total Internet cost down to about $30-40 a month (vs. $300+ for VSAT), an amount the Radio could probably sustain, Radio Beeray currently has no Internet.   The reason, which is almost always the case, once funding ends payments stop to the satellite provider.    We worked so hard to engineer a solution that was affordable that we overlooked the fact that once Geekcorps was gone they would have no way of paying.    This is too often the case and in many cases it is unavoidable.

The good news is that increasingly you are able to pay for data via a prepaid scratch card, the same you use to fill up your cell.    2G/3G in Africa is coming and when it gets to Tomboctou, Radio Beeray will be able to stay online.

Happy Valentine’s Day (Mali Style)

Feb 14, 2009 Mali, Music

A friend sent me this from Amadou et Mariam and it brought back such good memories, I thought I would share. Man, I miss Mali.

If this wasn’t good enough, I just read that Amadou et Mariam have been invited to open for Coldplay for their first ten US shows! Awesome!