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
Nana Owusu Acheampong's C-Cell Phone Charger
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.
Also see related post on 12V Cell Phone Charging Practices in Mali
Toys from Trash
Mar 8, 2009 Education, Innovation, Innovators
Photo and quotes from Toy Story Times of India story
Some people talk about trying to change the world, then there are people like Arvind Gupta who have spend the last 30 years doing so. A graduate of IIT, Gupta left a promising career as a Telco engineer, to teach science. After seeing expensive UNICEF science kits left unopened, for fear of being damaged, Gupta realized that teachers needed to be able to make things themselves to be able to teach well. Ascribing to a view point that, “Science is not hardware, it is a viewpoint,” he began to create “toys” from everyday items, often trash, to teach children scientific concepts with the underlying belief that a more expensive education does not necessarily translate into a better one. Gupta and his team at the Children’s Science Centre at the University of Pune’s amazing work can be found on the incredible Toys from Trash website.
When I see project’s like the simple electric motor, I can’t help but wonder how many more William Kamkwamba‘s we would we have if teachers had access to Gupta “toys” in rural African schools.
When not designing new toys, Gupta also translates books into Hindi (100+ books!) which he posts for free on his website. I need to file Arvind Gupta in the back of my mind for the next time I am feeling lazy!
Ethiopian School Art
Dec 16, 2008 Africa, Education, Ethiopia, Innovation, Travel
I have seen many primary schools now in Africa and I was blown away by the primary schools I saw in Tigray in Northern, Ethiopia. In a very resource limited environment, these schools have turned to using paintings on all available school walls (both inside and outside of the classroom) as a teaching tool. In the Ethiopian school system, each school has a small pedagogical center and a teacher assigned to it. One of this person’s roles is to help oversee the development of these paintings. I think these are wonderful and changes the learning environment. I wish my school looked like this as a kid. It would be great to see more schools across Africa use a little paint to help overcome some of their challenging resource constraints.
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