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.
Rethinking the term “Solar Systems”
Jun 15, 2009 ICT4D, Solar, Technology
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.
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)
Google Gears = Offline Gmail = Killer African Web App
Feb 2, 2009 Technology, Web
Earlier this week with little fanfare, Google enabled browser based, offline access to Gmail. While this is exciting for all of us who who have long yearned to ditch our desktop email clients, the ability to now access webservices like Gmail, even when we are offline, has enormous implications towards improving the way people living in Africa will now be able to access the Internet.
While things are rapidly improving, connecting to the Internet in Africa can still be a painfully slow experience in most places – the result of over-shared bandwidth, poorly managed backbones and the high latency of satellite jumps. All this contributes to a very unstable connection, one that handles things like Ajax requests poorly resulting in a lot of time outs that plague many Web2.0 applications. It’s clear that many modern web apps weren’t designed with African Internet conditions in mind.
Offline Gmail is made possible by Google Gears which stores a local cache of messages behind the scenes when connected. This enables users to access a Google Gears enabled website like Gmail (Google Docs now works offline too) through a web browser and experience a similar web experience to if they were online.
While having offline access to one’s webmail is a huge benefit on its own, the emergence of Gears enabled sites is exciting for Africa for a number of different reasons:
- Dealing with poor connections with flaky connection mode – a Gears enabled Gmail now includes a “flaky” mode which enables you to always run off the local store with emails syncing in the background ensuring a continous user experience regardless of your connection status. I can now finally retire my email IMAP client.
- Better bandwidth use - The advantage of POP and IMAP is that the internet connections in Africa are typically better at streaming/straight data transfers. Google Gears greatly cuts down on the requests of a webapp by downloading queued messages in the background similar to POP or IMAP. While it still may be slow, at least with POP you know you’ll only have to download a message once. You also now have the option leaving your Gmail open to download messages. Finally, while tests to verify this are required, it can be assumed that the bandwidth consumption when using Gears will be lower which is important when dealing with a pay-per-byte connectivity model which one encounters when connecting via an Edge/3G cellphone connection. In aggregate this gain in efficiency is important when you consider that 70% of Internet within Africa is routed outside of the continent.
- In Africa web apps / portability is king – client based email only works when you have dedicated access to your own computer. Since this is rarely the case in Africa, the vast majority of people have jumped straight to webmail. Google Gears is probably not optimal for a certain environments where there is a high user turnover (you would downloading everyone’s messages). There will undoubtedly be some clever solutions for this in short time. I could see USB keys with a Google geared portable Firefox quickly becoming the email solution of choice for African university students. Another option would be to simply run Firefox in a lab setting from a network drive.
To access Gmail when you are offline, you will need to enable offline in your Gmail Lab settings and have the newest version of Google Gears installed. Once enabled, Google Gears will begin an initial sync syncing approximely the last two weeks of your email. Depending on how popular you are and the speed of your connection, this could take from 5-15 minutes.
The Geekcorps CanTV
Nov 10, 2006 Geekcorps, ICT4D, Mali, Technology
Geekcorps CanTV Project
In November, 2006 Geekcorps did a CanTV pilot in Bourem Inaly, a small village on the Niger river about 35KM from Tombouctou in northern Mali. Our hope was to pilot a new technology we had developed to see if it could be used to generate revenue for the community radio station we had been working with there.
The following is from an earlier post, I had posted originally on the Geekcorps website summarizing the project.
In the village of Bourem Inaly, Mali there are over 120 television sets powered by 12-volt car batteries, but there is almost nothing to watch. With its CanTV project, Geekcorps has helped the local radio station stream video content to the local community over WiFi. The radio station, which rents these units out, benefits from a new monthly revenue stream while the villagers benefit with an improved source of news and entertainment.
One goal of the CanTV project is to make it possible to build the CanTV receivers or TV cantennas (antennas built with cans) using locally using locally available parts, with the exception of the $25 audio/video receiver currently imported from Canada. Also, the TV cantennas have been designed so that a local technician can quickly learn how to install them without special tools. The radio station already has access to television broadcasts via satellite, and a TV over WiFi transmitter installed in August 2005 by Moussa Keita of Geekcorps.
Recently, Geekcorps successfully installed CanTV’s in fifteen different households (213 people) across Bourem Inaly. As a result, the radio station earns roughly $45 dollars a month or (22,500 CFA) on the rentals of the CanTV’s which goes a long way in helping to ensure the radio’s own financial sustainability. The radio station’s goal now is to reinvest its profits to purchase an additional CanTV each month so more of the local community can benefit from their new service offering.
The following is a video of the making of the Geekcorps CanTV. I heard later it was shown at TED Africa.
Making of a Geekcorps CanTV
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