Tag: innovation

Next Generation of Innovation for the Grassroots

Post author By David South Consulting
Post date 09/10/2022
No Comments on Next Generation of Innovation for the Grassroots

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Taking inspiration from science fiction sagas like the TV show Star Trek, the next generation of innovation is already taking shape in the South. A group of innovative facilities called Fab Labs (short for Fabrication Laboratory) in Ghana, India, Kenya, South Africa and Costa Rica are applying cutting-edge technology to address the everyday needs of people.

Like the futuristic “replicator” in 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.

Originally an idea from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Bits and Atoms, which sponsors nine of the labs, Fab Labs let people use digital technology to build physical objects, from eyeglass frames to toys and computer parts. Fab Labs empower local invention by turning education, problem-solving and job creation into a creative process.

Started by Professor Neil Gershenfeld, Fab Labs use US $20,000 worth of computers, open source design software, laser cutters, milling machines and soldering irons, letting people harness their creativity to build things they need, including tools, replacement parts and essential products unavailable in the local market.

With minimal training, children and adults are designing and making their own toys, jewellery and even computer circuit boards with the machines. It turns people from consumers into inventors.

“Instead of bringing information technology to the masses, the Fab Labs bring information technology development to the masses,” said Gershenfeld.

In Ghana, the Takoradi Technical Institute in the southwest of the country hosts a Fab Lab, allowing a wide variety of people to use the “replicator” – from local street children to tribal chiefs – to make a wide range of products. The Ghana lab has several projects on the go, including antennae and radios for wireless internet networks and solar-powered machinery for cooking, cooling and cutting. The labs have found that the younger the users, the faster the skills are picked up.

John Silvester Boafo, principal at the Takoradi Technical Institute, is proud of what he calls a fu-fu pounder. “In a Ghanaian home, the main dish is fu-fu,” he told the BBC. “Fu-fu is made of plaintain and cassava, which are cooked. After they are cooked, they are put into a mortar and pounded by hand. People go through hard labour just to get a meal to eat. So, we thought we could fabricate this machine to alleviate the hard labour they use in pounding.”

They are also working on portable hand-held chargeable solar panels for televisions and refrigerators.

In Pabal, in the western part of Maharashtra, India, a Fab Lab was established at the Vigyan Ashram in 2002 and is now working on developing agricultural instruments. They are also testing milk for quality and safety, and tuning diesel engines to run more efficiently, especially with bio fuels. Another lab in Bithoor in the state of Uttar Pradesh (operated with the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur) is working on 3-D scanning and printing for rural artisans, such as producing wooden blocks used in Chikan embroidery.

In South Africa, officials are in the process of setting up four labs. The first is in the capital Pretoria, home to Africa’s first “science park”. The second is in the township of Shoshanguve, a very poor community with high unemployment.

“We have these very high-tech small start-up companies that are excited by the proximity of the lab,” said Sushil Borde, head of the government agency charged with rolling out the four labs. “The companies say, ‘We have these brilliant ideas, we have these business models, but we don’t know how to get these ideas into tangible products.”

Borde hopes the network of Fab Labs will enable South African entrepreneurs and engineers to test their ideas and “fast track the process of growth and development.”

Seventeen-year-old Kenneth Chauke has been able to build a robot in the Fab Lab in Pretoria, he told the Christian Science Monitor.

IT supervisor Nthabiseng Nkadimeng at the Fab Lab in Shoshanguve, has been encouraging South African youth to dream expansively about new technology. “We want to encourage innovation,” she told the Christian Science Monitor. “A lot of the kids, right now, they’re making toys. That’s okay, it’s a start. But eventually we want them to do things that haven’t been done before.”

“It’s the idea that if you’re somewhere in rural South Africa, and you want something for solar energy, you can go to a Fab Lab and make your own,” said Naas Zaayman, who works for the government on coordinating the Fab Lab strategy.

Published: October 2007

Resources:

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:
Biography: Professor Neil Gershenfeld
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!

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/02/17/african-digital-laser-breakthrough-promises-future-innovation/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/05/african-innovation-eco-system-taking-shape/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/05/18/african-innovation-helps-make-banking-transactions-safer/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/10/bringing-the-invention-and-innovation-mindset-to-young-kenyans/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2020/04/25/china-looking-to-lead-on-robot-innovation/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/24/flurry-of-anti-poverty-innovations/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/03/24/frugal-innovation-trend-meets-global-souths-innovation-culture/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/09/grassroots-entrepreneurs-now-have-many-ways-to-fund-their-enterprises/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2017/10/18/innovation-agenda-and-timeline-2007-2015/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/11/innovation-cairos-green-technology-pioneers/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2020/04/27/innovation-from-the-global-south/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2020/12/14/innovation-in-growing-cities-to-prevent-social-exclusion/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/04/28/innovation-in-the-slums-can-bring-peace-and-prosperity/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/03/04/innovation-villages-tackling-mdgs/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/10/22/innovations-in-green-economy-top-three-agenda/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/27/kenyan-mobile-phone-innovations/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/03/02/new-3d-technology-makes-innovation-breakthrough-and-puts-mind-over-matter/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2016/04/14/southern-innovator-and-the-growing-global-innovation-culture-14-april-2016/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/04/08/technological-innovation-alive-in-brazil/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/09/26/3d-home-printing-landmark-10-houses-in-a-day/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/09/26/3d-printing-gives-boy-a-new-arm-in-sudan/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/01/02/a-undp-success-story-grassroots-environmental-campaign-mobilizes-thousands-in-mongolia-1998/

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-1/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/03/05/southern-innovator-issue-2/

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

Time Machines

By David South

Flare Magazine (Toronto, Canada) 1992

Time Machines

While many designers are telling us to don platform shoes and love beads, the man behind London-based Hi-Tek watches is looking even further back in time – drawing his inspiration from classic visions of the future.

Hi-Tek’s stainless steel timepieces bring to mind early futuristic films such as Lang’s Metropolis and Chaplin’s Modern Times with their grotesque exaggerations of modern machinery. That era’s confusion, fear, or simple wonderment at new technology influenced everything from toasters to steam trains.

For the equally economically and technologically turbulent ‘90s, Hi-Tek designer Alexander has captured this sense of techno-wonder with watches, sunglasses, and other hip accessories. One watch looks as if a Cuisinart hit it, leaving gears strewn across the face. Another has a retractable lid like an astronomer’s observatory. Yet another tells time with the blinker of a radar screen. Despite their made-exclusively-for-James-Bond appearance, all cost less than $190. Available at Possessions in Montreal, Body Body in Toronto, and D and R in Vancouver.

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2020/11/24/too-black/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/16/canadian-magazines-newspapers-1990s/

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 2022

Tags 1992, 1992 (Toronto, 1992-1994, Canada, David South, David South Consulting, fashion, innovation, innovation and innovators, innovator, innovators, Toronto

Archive Development Challenges, South-South Solutions Newsletters

African Innovation Eco-system Taking Shape

Post author By David South Consulting
Post date 05/10/2022
No Comments on African Innovation Eco-system Taking Shape

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

How to increase the rate of innovation in Africa? And specifically, innovation that actually improves people’s lives and reduces poverty. It is a hard question to answer, but some are putting in place the building blocks of a 21st century innovation culture by riding the information technology revolution as it rolls across Africa.

The transformative story of mobile phones in Africa has captured the attention of the world. Technologies like mobile phone payment systems developed in Africa are now being rolled out around the globe.

But there is more to come as undersea cables increase the communications links between African nations and the rest of the world. New undersea cables including TEAMs, Seacom and Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy) (eassy.org) are vastly increasing the continent’s Internet capacity and bandwidth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth_%28computing%29).

These communications links will revolutionize the type and scale of innovation that can happen in Africa.

As websites like AfriGadget (afrigadget.com) amply prove, there is already an entrenched do-it-yourself innovation culture hard-wired into daily life on the continent. While impressively resourceful and able to make the most of often very little, this innovation culture is often confined to a narrow geographical area. And this is the difference the new information technologies will make: They will allow this energetic and resourceful innovators’ culture to develop businesses and business models that can reach beyond narrow geographical parameters.

New technologies will also accelerate the spread of new ideas and solutions.

Across the continent, ways and means are being stitched together that enable people to transcend borders and old divisions and obstacles to connect with like-minded collaborators, seek out funding and take ideas from dreams to schemes and eventually to continent- and world-straddling levels.

According to the Deloitte 2011 East Africa Private Equity Confidence Survey: Promising 2012, “Many investors see East Africa’s strong growth potential as a driver of better investment performance than in South Africa: This is a huge shift in private equity attitudes toward Africa, which have been historically focused on South Africa. East African investment potential is seen as roughly on par with West Africa, where similar growth dynamics are at play.”

Identifying the elements that are making this innovation culture flourish came under analysis in a recent post on the Afrinnovator website (afrinnovator.com). Afrinnovator is dedicated to “telling the stories of African startups, African innovation, African made technology, African tech entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs.”

While it is well known that new infrastructure, better governance, new policies, and new services like mobile phones and mobile money have made a big difference in shifting perceptions of Africa from despair to optimism, Afrinnovator found there were other key ingredients to this innovation renaissance.

Afrinnovator argues there are four elements that have come together to change circumstances for innovators on the continent: education, mentoring and incubators, funding, and showcase events.

Afrinnovator found education was critical to the quality of emerging technological innovations. Information and communication technology (ICT) education has moved from just computer science courses to a vast array of options, from bachelors degrees to masters programmes.

For mentoring and incubators, Afrinnovator found hubs and incubators are providing places for young educated people to go to and get down to work.

Examples include iHub (http://ihub.co.ke/pages/home.php), mLab East Africa (http://mlab.co.ke/pages/home.php), ccHub (Co-Creation Hub Nigeria) (http://cchubnigeria.com/about-cchub/), Lusaka, Zambia’s Bongohive (bongohive.com), iLab Africa (http://ilabafrica.ac.ke/) NaiLab (http://nailab.co.ke/) iBid Labs (http://ibidlabs.com/) and Uganda’s HiveColab (http://hivecolab.org/), among others. These places offer like-minded fellowship and access to mentors to take them on the journey from “idea to viable profitable business.”

According to Business Daily Africa, “There are more than 3,000 software developers who have come up with both mobile and personal computer-based software applications that are changing lives across the continent.”

A transformation in funding access has seen a renaissance in new thinking that is transforming tech start-ups into viable businesses. Kenya has the Kenya ICT Board (http://www.ict.go.ke/) and it awards US $50,000 through its Tandaa grant programme (https://sites.google.com/a/ict.go.ke/tandaa/).

Because of this enthusiastic local support, the World Bank is now committing a US $55 million grant targeting Kenya’s technology innovators to be distributed through the Kenya ICT Board.

East Africa also saw 16 new investor funds launch in 2011 alone. They include early-stage investor funds like eVentures Fund Africa (eVA) (http://www.eva-fund.com/), which calls itself “the first venture capital firm investing in African SME’s active in digital media.” Another is Kenya-based 88mph (http://www.humanipo.com/88mph), with its “focus on startups targeting the East African mobile and web market.”

In Kenya, the World Bank money will be used to help technology developers bring to market simple solutions in health and education.

According to the World Bank (http://tinyurl.com/cm3g2rf), “Kenya has put in place the second-fastest broadband on the continent (after Ghana), which has reduced the wholesale internet capacity prices by over 90% and increased internet penetration from 3% to 37% of the population in the past decade. Today, about 90% of Kenyan adults have or have the use of a mobile phone.”

And the final game-changer, according to Afrinnovator, is “showcase events.”

These events give investors and potential partners the opportunity to meet start-ups and explore their new ideas.

Examples include DEMO (http://www.demo.com/ehome/index.php?eventid=29414&amp😉 – which connects the idea people with the money people – and Pivot East in East Africa (http://pivoteast.com/). Pivot East provides 25 technology entrepreneurs with the opportunity to make a pitch in front of investors. DEMO is working with USAID, Microsoft, Nokia and others to launch DEMO Africa in Nairobi, Kenya from 21 to 22 October 2012.

Afrinnovator concludes: “This is the last virgin tech landscape left on the planet. The best time to become a player in the African technology innovation ecosystem is now.”

Published: July 2012

Resources

1) Read more about Africa’s evolving innovation system. Website: http://afrinnovator.com/blog/2012/06/13/the-innovation-ecosystem-in-eastafrica/

2) Southern Innovator: Youth and Entrepreneurship Issue. Website: http://www.scribd.com/doc/86451057/Southern-Innovator-Magazine-Issue-2

3) Southern Innovator: Mobile Phones and Information Technology Issue. Website: http://www.scribd.com/doc/57980406/Southern-Innovator-

Magazine-Issue-1

4) Notes from ‘Understanding Broadband Demand in Africa: Internet Going Mobile’. Website: http://www.oafrica.com/mobile/notes-from-understanding-broadband-demandin-africa-internet-going-mobile/

5) Deloitte Private Equity Survey 2012. Website: deloitte.com

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

Archive Blogroll Southern Innovator magazine

Finding Southern Innovator Magazine | 2022

Post author By David South Consulting
Post date 18/07/2022
No Comments on Finding Southern Innovator Magazine | 2022

An ad promoting the magazine’s fourth issue is below:

Team | Southern Innovator Phase 1 Development (2010 – 2015)

Southern Innovator can be read online here:

ISSN: 2222-9280

Website of the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC): https://unsouthsouth.org/2014/12/25/southern-innovator-magazine/

Scribd

Issue 1: http://www.scribd.com/doc/57980406/Southern-Innovator-Issue-1

Issue 2: http://www.scribd.com/doc/86451057/Southern-Innovator-Magazine-Issue-2

Issue 3: http://www.scribd.com/doc/106055665/Southern-Innovator-Magazine-Issue-3-Agribusiness-and-Food-Security

Issue 4: http://www.scribd.com/doc/128283953/Southern-Innovator-Magazine-Issue-4

Issue 5: http://www.scribd.com/doc/207579744/Southern-Innovator-Magazine-Issue-5-Waste-and-Recycling

Google Books

Issue 1: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Q1O54YSE2BgC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Issue 2: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Ty0N969dcssC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Issue 3: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=AQNt4YmhZagC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Issue 4: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=9T_n2tA7l4EC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Issue 5: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6ILdAgAAQBAJ&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

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If you would like hard copies of the magazine for distribution, then please contact the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation: Website: http://ssc.undp.org/content/ssc.html. If you would like to either sponsor an issue of Southern Innovator or place an advertisement in the magazine, then please contact southerninnovator@yahoo.co.uk. This is a great opportunity to reach millions around the world and to connect with the pioneers and innovators shaping this new world. With Issue 5 tackling the timely theme of Waste and Recycling, this is the moment to get on board and help support SI. With global urbanization levels continuing to rise, fresh thinking of the kind found in Southern Innovator‘s fifth issue is urgently required.

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