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Toilet Malls Make Going Better

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

Across the global South, clever entrepreneurs are transforming services that were bare-bones, grim and out-of-date into modern facilities packed with features that help to pay for their operation. In Kenya, an entrepreneur has used this approach to transform the poor quality of public toilets.

Public sanitation is essential for good health and a high quality of life. Around the world, more than 2.6 billion people, or 41 percent of the world’s population, are without access to basic sanitation. As a result, most have to make do and defecate or urinate wherever they can. In crowded urban areas, the result is an unpleasant source of disease and filth that fouls living spaces and sickens or kills many people.

Nairobi’s slums are notorious for so-called ‘flying toilets’ or ‘scud missiles’: plastic bags filled with excrement that act as the only toilet available for many. Half the population also has no access to clean water. It has been estimated these appalling conditions contribute to up to 50 percent of health problems for slum dwellers.

The Iko Toilet started by David Kuria first came to life in Nairobi’s central business district.

“What we saw in the last 10 years, the few public toilets that existed were in very poor shape,” he told CNN. “In fact they had been taken over by the street boys, and they were a point for mugging and drug trafficking. With that background we needed some sort of social transformation. For people to gain the confidence that you could have a public toilet which is clean which is safe and you can go in and come out the same way.”

The solution was “toilet malls,” complete with a range of on-site micro businesses to make going to the public toilet attractive. Apart from music and radio to listen to, there is a shoe shining service, snack bars selling fruit and water, and even banking services. The idea is that the micro businesses pay for the upkeep and cleaning of the toilet. And their presence also keeps the toilets safe because there is always somebody around.

While the concept was pioneered in the business district, it is now moving out into Nairobi’s slums. So far, Kuria has completed 12 toilets in Nairobi and has another 18 under development. He is also rolling out the toilets to other parts of the country. He receives the plots of land from local municipalities and his company, Ecotact, builds the toilets.

It costs five Kenyan shillings (US .07 cents) to use the toilets.

Kuria had become frustrated with the city council’s inability to provide clean and safe public toilets.

“I thought for some time before coming up with the idea,” he told The Nation. “People had nowhere to go and thugs were holding them to ransom in the few facilities then run by the council.”

Kuria said people are leaving good comments about the toilets and say it makes them proud to be Kenyan.

The cost to build a toilet is Sh 2 million (US $26,000) and the toilet is managed by Kuria for five years. At the end of the contract, he will hand them over to the local council.

“We are getting support from UNDP and other partners like East African Breweries, the Global Water International and the Rotary International,” he said.

An architect by training, Kuria is hoping to employ more than 1,000 people by the end of this year. So far 120 people work for the Iko Toilets. Like so many others, he is also affected by chronic water shortages.

“We are worried because when there is scarcity of water, we are forced to buy it at an additional cost,” he said.

Private vendors currently provide the water for the toilet malls.

Iko Toilets are so successful they have made it into the ‘Hall of Fame’ at the World Toilet Organization (http://www.worldtoilet.org/). Kuria was also winner of the World Economic Forum’s Africa Entrepreneur of the Year award earlier this year.

And his ambitions extend beyond Kenya.

“We also want to go to other countries. Uganda, Rwanda and South Africa have already approached me for Iko Toilets,” he said.

Published: August 2009

Resources

1) World Toilet Organization: The global non-profit organization committed to improving toilet and sanitation conditions. Website: http://www.worldtoilet.org

2) World Toilet College: Established in 2005, the World Toilet College (WTC) started as a social enterprise, with the belief that there is a need for an independent world body to ensure the best practices and standards in toilet design, cleanliness, and sanitation technologies are adopted and disseminated through training. Website: http://www.worldtoilet.org/ourwork3.asp

3) Official website for the 2008 International Year of Sanitation. Website: http://esa.un.org/iys/

4) Waste has expert knowledge on domestic solid and liquid waste management and sanitation issues. Its website offers a comparison of designs and methods for toilets. Website: http://www.ecosan.nl/page/353

5) A set of photos on Flickr of the Iko toilets. Website: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wateradvocates/3306962447/

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP’s South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator. 

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This work is licensed under a
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ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

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Archive Development Challenges, South-South Solutions Newsletters

Successful Fuel-Efficient Cookers Show the Way

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

A Kenyan entrepreneur has cooked up a fuel-efficient stove and oven that uses less of a precious national resource: wood from trees.

Most African households using fuel-burning stoves either cannot afford clean-burning fuels like natural gas or electric stoves, or do not have access to them. They are stuck having to burn wood or other materials like animal dung – collectively called biomass – on open fires.

As well as using up wood and contributing to deforestation, there is another downside to these stoves. The use of polluting fuel-burning stoves by half the world’s population – including 80 percent of rural households – is a documented contributor to a host of health problems. Poor households not only have to contend with the ill health effects of dirty water and poor sanitation, the fumes from burning dung, wood, coal or crop leftovers lead to the global deaths of more than 1.6 million people a year from breathing toxic indoor air (WHO).

Two solutions in Kenya are helping people to cook more efficiently (meaning less time wasted on gathering material to burn, and less fuel used) and reducing cooking time by using heat more effectively.

Invented by Dr Maxwell Kinyanjui, the Kinyanjui Jiko is a fuel-efficient charcoal oven that comes in small, medium and large industrial sizes. Made entirely in Kenya, the ovens are custom designed for a variety of environments, from domestic household use and on-the-go safari models to high-capacity models for micro-enterprises and large institutions. Cooks can use the ovens to bake, toast, steam or boil. And they are 40 percent cheaper than cooking with electricity and between 15 and 20 percent cheaper than gas.

Kinyanjui’s Musaki Enterprises Ltd. (www.reskqu.blogspot.com/2009/01/arboretum-project.html) has developed a reputation for pioneering work in developing fuel-efficient stoves and ovens. Its most popular success to date has been the Kenya Ceramic Jiko (jiko is Swahili for cooker), or KCJ, a cheap, simple and effective stove. The company was set up in 1992, but has been involved in international aid-funded research and development efforts since the 1980s.

“My dad was on a very good team of highly motivated individuals in the early 80s who developed the stove through pragmatism, logic and good old-fashioned ingenuity,” said his son, Teddy Kinyanjui. “He then set up the independent Musaki Enterprises.”

The KCJ uses a ceramic liner placed inside a metal container. The metal is usually recycled, often taken from 55 gallon steel drums. The ceramic liner stops the heat energy from simply escaping into the environment and helps to focus the heat on cooking. Simply adding the ceramic liner reduces the stove’s fuel consumption by between 25 and 40 percent. The charcoal or wood sits in the ceramic basin and the burnt ash falls through holes in the bottom of the liner.

The stove design was a result of international and Kenyan cooperation, and has become popular in many African countries, including Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Malawi, Niger, Senegal and Sudan. It is used in 50 percent of urban homes in Kenya and 16 percent of rural homes.

Musaki Enterprises say the KCJ stoves on average save between 1 and 1.5 tons of CO2 per stove per year compared to other models. In supermarkets, the KCJs retail for around US $5 and the Kinyanjui Jiko ovens start at around US $100.

The deployment of the KCJ stoves has helped in slowing the deforestation of the country, but has not been able to bring it to a halt because of population growth and poor re-forestation efforts, says Teddy Kinyanjui.

“The lack of forward planning in tree planting is making firewood and charcoal harder and harder to obtain,” he said. “Fossil fuels are unavailable or unaffordable. Tree planting must begin now on a huge scale for people to continue cooking.”

Teddy won’t reveal how profitable the KCJ stoves have been, but says, “I wouldn’t have gone to school if they didn’t sell well.”

“Well, more and more people keep buying the damn things as fast as we can make them, so I think our customers like them,” he said. “They really all seem to like that the stoves cook really well for really cheap and are very high quality.”

Published: June 2009

Resources

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/02/20/baker-cookstoves-designing-for-the-african-customer/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/02/14/cleaner-stoves-to-reduce-global-warming/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/02/11/cooking-bag-helps-poor-households-save-time-money/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/02/15/innovative-stoves-to-help-the-poor/

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP’s South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator. 

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/03/05/southern-innovator-issue-5/

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This work is licensed under a
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ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

© David South Consulting 2022

Categories
Archive Development Challenges, South-South Solutions Newsletters

African Ingenuity Attracting Interest

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

The tide of science and innovation from the South is grabbing the world’s attention. While the big giants of India, China and Brazil are well-established hubs of invention, it is the once-overlooked continent of Africa that is generating current excitement. The atmosphere can be equated to the flush of innovation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as inventors tackled the budding new technologies of the combustion engine, flight, electricity and radio waves. These days, it’s the challenges of development, rapid urbanization and finding ways to ‘hack’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hack_%28technology%29), like adapting existing  technology such as mobile phones or bicycles to new purposes.

That previous period of invention had a spirit of pioneering and making-do, of dreams and adaptability triumphing over poverty, and it laid the path for many new companies to sprout up and create wealth and jobs for millions. At this August’s Maker Faire Africa gathering (http://makerfaireafrica.com/) in Accra, Ghana, African pioneers in grassroots innovation offered inspiring inventions.

The rapid changes happening in African countries – especially the tilt to having a larger urban population than a rural one – means there is an urgent need to boost incomes.

Handled right, these grassroots inventors could grow to become part of the already expanding South-South trade, which grew by an average of 13 percent per year between 1995 and 2007, to make up 20 percent of world trade.

Inspired by the US magazine Make (http://makezine.com/) – a do-it-yourself technology magazine written by makers of computers, electronics and robotics – the first Maker Faire gathering was held in 2006 in the San Francisco area of the United States.

The African Maker Faire modelled itself on this approach and has tapped into Africa’s well-entrenched do-it-yourself development culture. It went looking for more inventors like those celebrated on the website AfriGadget (http://www.afrigadget.com/), with its projects that solve “everyday problems with African ingenuity.” The Faire works with the participants to share their ideas and to find ways to make money from their ideas.

The Faire in Accra ran in parallel with the International Development Design Summit (http://2009.iddsummit.org/),which came to Ghana from its home at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (http://web.mit.edu/) in the United States. Its aim was to bring technology closer to “potential end users of the projects.”

“It is part of the revolution in design that aims to create equity in the distribution of research and development resources by focusing on the needs of the world’s poor,” organizers said.

This spirit of African invention is about breaking the perception that invention is a purely Northern phenomenon that requires complex and expensive materials. African ingenuity is about taking whatever is available and tackling common problems. It is an empowering approach that celebrates local initiative and seeks to find ways to turn these inventions into sustainable incomes.

“What’s different about African mechanics and gadgets is that it’s generally made with much fewer, and more basic, materials,” said Afrigadget founder Erik Hersman. “Where you might find a story on how to make hi-tech robots at home in Make, its counterpart in Africa might be how to create a bicycle out of wood. No less ingenuity needed, but far more useful for an African’s everyday life.”

The African Maker Faire featured a wide range of solutions, from a low-power radio station to a bicycle-powered saw and a simple corn planter.

Shamsudeen Napara, from northern Ghana, brought a US $10 corn planter that looks like a pill dispenser to help speed up crop planting. He also has invented a cheap shea nut (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shea_butter) roaster. These inventions are cooked up in his metal fabrication shop which builds tools for agricultural use. Shea nut processing is a lucrative task for women in Northern Ghana. Napara’s roaster costs US $40 and reduces the energy and time to process the nuts. He has also made a soap cutter using piano wires and guitar screws.

Bernard Kiwia, a bicycle mechanic from Arusha, Tanzania, is a pioneer working with windmills, water pumps, mobile phone chargers and pedal-powered hacksaws – all made from old bike parts.

Hayford Bempong, David Celestin and Michael Amankwanor from Accra Polytechnic (http://www.accrapolytechnic.edu.gh/), built a low-power radio station. Made from scrap electronic parts and an antenna from copper pipe, the radio was put straight to use to broadcast announcements at the event over a range of a few thousand metres.

Suprio Das, Killian Deku, Laura Stupin and Bernard Kiwia brought a method to produce chlorine from salt water and other common materials. It can then be used to purify water. Their method can clean vast quantities of water using no moving parts (avoiding breakdowns). It does this by dripping chlorine into the water until a level has been reached, and then the purified water is released. By using a 5 litre bag of chlorine, and a US $3 valve, 100,000 litres of water can be purified.

Electricity was also being made using low-cost batteries from aluminum cans and plastic water bottles. Applying salt water as an electrolyte (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolyte),electricity is created by the oxidation of the aluminum can – a cheaper approach and less toxic than commercial batteries.

A group called Afrobotics (http://www.afrobotics.com) gave a presentation to encourage more African students to go into engineering, science and technology. Afrobotics is set up as a competition to “fuel engineering, science, innovation, and entrepreneurship on the African continent, utilizing robotics.” They have some excellent videos of African robots in action: http://www.afrobotics.com/videos.

Published: October 2009

Resources

1) Fab Labs: Like the futuristic “replicator” in the TV show Star Trek, Fab Labs allow people to design and produce what they need there and then. The labs are mushrooming throughout the South as people get the innovation bug. The Fab Lab program is part of the MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA) which broadly explores how the content of information relates to its physical representation. Website: http://fab.cba.mit.edu/

2) id21 Insights: A series of articles by the UK ’s Institute of Development Studies on how to make technology and science relevant to the needs of the poor. Website: http://www.id21.org/insights/insights68/art00.html

3) eMachineShop: This remarkable service allows budding inventors to download free design software, design their invention, and then have it made in any quantity they wish and shipped to them: Amazing! Website: http://www.emachineshop.com/

4) The red dot logo stands for belonging to the best in design and business. The red dot is an internationally recognised quality label for excellent design that is aimed at all those who would like to improve their business activities with the help of design. Website: www.red-dot.de

5) Institute for the Future: It identifies emerging trends that will transform global society and the global marketplace. It provides insight into business strategy, design process, innovation, and social dilemmas. Its website helps budding inventors to identify new areas of invention.Website: http://www.iftf.org/

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP’s South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator. 

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This work is licensed under a
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ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

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Categories
Archive Development Challenges, South-South Solutions Newsletters

Cashing in on Music in Brazil

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

Brazilian musicians have found a way to prosper and exploit the realities of music distribution in the modern age. The biggest problem for most artists – both beginners and those who are more established – is how to earn an income from their work. In the digital age, it is next to impossible to stop people freely copying your work and passing it on.

The impact of digital technology on the global music business has been earth-shattering. It’s estimated 95 percent of music digital downloads are unauthorized, with no payment to artists and producers. While the legal digital music business grew for the sixth consecutive year in 2008, with a 25 percent increase in global sales to a trade value of US$3.7 billion, this only makes up 20 percent of total music sales (IFPI) (http://www.ifpi.org/). Even legal digital services like Apple’s iTunes have suffered (http://www.apple.com/downloads/).

An economic solution to this conundrum is critical for the growth of creative economies in the South.

The traditional music industry model from the analogue age – where copies of music are tightly controlled and royalties and profits funnel back to recording companies – has come unstuck in the digital age. With digital recordings, it is easy to copy high quality music and distribute it for free through the Internet, by audio music players like the iPod or on discs.

Many are saying a corner has been turned: free distribution is the new future and illegal copying is the new normal. The model for music making has been turned on its head: from high investment and high returns, it is now low investment and low returns. And this model chimes very well with the world most Southern musicians live in. The chances for most of emulating the champagne and jets lifestyle of the Rolling Stones or Beyonce is beyond their reality. But they can build a slower and more sustainable income with the new digital model.

A music phenomenon in Brazil’s poorer neighbourhoods, tecnobrega (brega means cheesy or corny) is a mix of electronic beats from the 1980s, mixed with found snippets of strange sounds or sound bites, combined in a so-called ‘mash-up’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashups). It makes for an easy-to-dance-to mix.

“Tecnobrega is a regional music, the music that people here in (the state of) Para most enjoy,” DJ Edilson told the BBC. “The secrets are the beats which drive people crazy.”

With music becoming easier and cheaper to record to a high standard, and distribution of music less and less a money-making opportunity, musicians have turned to economic models revolving around live performance to make the bulk of their income.

“What is going on is that people, sometimes in very poor areas, are appropriating electronic instruments like computers and synthesizers to create their own music,” said Ronaldo Lemos, a professor at the respected Getulio Vargas Foundation (http://www.fgv..br/ ) and project lead for the Creative Commons Brazil (http://creativecommons.org/international/br/).

“So this is a phenomenon that is going on not only in the tecnobrega scene but with many scenes around the world like Kuduro in Angola, Kwaito in South Africa, Bubblin’ in Suriname.”

The tecnobrega model works like this: People set up makeshift studios in their homes. They use a personal computer and a software programme to mix and blend the songs. Once the songs are ready, they either organize themselves, or more often, perform at a sound system party. There are said to be as many as 4,000 sound system parties per month in Belem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bel%C3%A9m) and it is a hugely competitive market. The sound system parties can vary from a small crowd to heaving groups of 10 to 15,000 people. 

The money for performing at these parties is good. A musician performing just once can make 2,200 realis (US $919), and can do this 12 times a month. This is a good income compared to the minimum wage in Belem: 700 realis (US $292). It is estimated it generates US $1.5 million a month in Belem.

In Brazil, where many do not have broadband Internet and thus can’t download music, fans buy pirated and cheap compact discs (CDs) in markets. Local musicians make their own CDs and give them free to local street vendors. While they make no money off the CDs that are then sold by the vendors, they do drum up publicity and profile. And they then use this to draw large paying crowds to their live gigs.

In just a few years, tecnobrega has become a multi-million dollar music business in Brazil. Once an artist has gained experience performing live at the parties, they can develop the skills to organize their own events, and boost their income accordingly.

One singer who has successfully exploited the opportunities raised by the tecnobrega phenomenon is Gaby Amarantos (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKjH__ghQa4 ). She now regularly appears on TV. 

“We have found a new way to work,” she told the BBC. “It is a new format and a new market model because we produce the music ourselves and the cost to make one song is very cheap.”

“What happens is that the musicians skip the intermediaries,” said Ronaldo Lemos.

“So the musicians do not make money from the CDs that are sold by the street vendors, they actually make money by playing live at the so-called sound system parties – the aparelhagem parties as we tecnobrega say here in Brazil – and also by selling CDs after they play live.

“No-one expects to make money from the CDs – they use it as a way to advertise the music and to advertise themselves as artists, and then their expectation is that they get invited to play at the sound system parties and clubs.

“The more their music gets distributed, the more they will make money in return.”

The furious pace of innovation in the tecnobrega scene is all about generating more revenue and more income. New styles emerge to cater to new tastes: cyber tecnobrega, brega melody, electro melody. And this passion for innovation has kept the tecnobrega entrepreneurs ahead of the traditional music business in how it uses digital technologies.

Lemos calls tecnobrega a “globoperipheral music”: it transcends rich and poor divisions and geographical boundaries.

Other examples include Argentina’s Cumbia Villera, or Brazil’s Funk Carioca.

“The number one lesson would be innovation – if you want to survive in the music industry right now you have to innovate,” said Lemos.

Published: March 2009

Resources

  • Good Copy, Bad Copy: A Danish documentary film by director Andreas Johnsen about the global explosion in movie- and music-making because of the digital revolution. Website: http://www.goodcopybadcopy.net/
  • A documentary trailer for a film about tecnobrega in Brazil directed by Gustavo Godinho e Vladimir Cunha. Website:http://www.vimeo.com/1993239

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP’s South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator. 

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

© David South Consulting 2023