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Teenager Uses Technology to Protect Livestock from Lions

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

In Kenya, a teenage Maasai (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maasai_people) inventor has developed a way to chase lions away from livestock that doesn’t harm the lions. It is a common practice to kill lions when they threaten or kill livestock, and this has led to a precipitous drop in the local lion population at Nairobi National Park (http://www.kws.org/parks/parks_reserves/NANP.html/), near the country’s capital, Nairobi. Lions are a significant tourist attraction for Kenya and the population decline is a threat to the future of the tourist industry.

Trying to find the right balance between livestock and wild animals is a problem across the global South. As populations rise, and the number of animals kept for domestic food markets increases, so does conflict between farmers and predatory wild animals looking for an easy meal. And there is no more tempting easy meal than domesticated animals tamed and kept in herds.

According to Reuters, 13-year-old Richard Turere has developed a system of flashing lights to scare off lions at night. The LED (light-emitting diode) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-emitting_diode) bulbs were gathered from broken flashlights. Turere then wired them to a solar-powered car battery used to power the family’s TV.

Turere has placed the lights on poles surrounding the enclosure where the cattle stay at night.

“Lions were eating our cattle at night, which made me very annoyed,” he told Reuters. “And I thought that I have to come up with an idea of making bulbs. Because I knew that the lions were afraid of something moving.

“When someone wakes up at night and moves with a torch, they are afraid. So I made the bulbs which flash at night and keep away lions.”

Nairobi National Park is wild and unfenced, leaving lions free to wander on to farmland. Tragically for the lions, increasing numbers are being killed by farmers protecting herds. Conservationists say Kenya’s lion population has plummeted from 15,000 to just 2,000 in a decade. Since October 2011, Wildlife Direct (http://wildlifedirect.org/) has documented 169 killings of livestock by lions in the location near Turere’s farm.

Kenya depends heavily on tourism to the national parks where people want to see lions. Kenya has been enjoying significant growth in tourism and has the goal of reaching 2 million international tourists in 2012 (Kenyan Ministry of Tourism). Earnings from international tourism are the second largest source of foreign exchange for the country and the services sector – 63 per cent of GDP (gross domestic product) – is dominated by tourism (Brand Kenya). So-called ‘photo safaris’ to the country’s national parks and game preserves are the main attraction for international tourists.

But farmers need to have their herds protected since livestock are a critical income source for them, as well as a food source for the country. Cattle herding has long been an important income source and livelihood for the Maasai people.

According to conservationist Dr. Paula Kahumbu, executive director of Wildlife Direct, other herding families would like Richard to set up the light system on their farms too.

Since Richard installed the lights, his family has not lost any cattle to lions. This bright idea has also dramatically altered Turere’s life. The attention he has received for the invention has led to him being funded by local environment groups to attend a prestigious private school, Brookhouse International School (http://www.brookhouse.ac.ke/) in Nairobi. Things are truly looking bright for Turere!

Published: August 2012

Resources

1) Experience Kenya: The web portal packed with information on Kenyan tourist attractions and investment opportunities. Website: http://www.experiencekenya.co.ke/index.php

2) Brand Kenya: The official Brand Kenya website shows how the country is weaving together all things Kenyan to create a strong global brand for the country. Website: http://brandkenya.co.ke/

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 2022

Categories
Archive Development Challenges, South-South Solutions Newsletters

Maker Faire and the R & D Rise in the South

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

The majority of the world’s research and development (R & D) in science and technology is now shifting to the global South. Powerhouses like China boast vast numbers of published papers in peer-reviewed journals and hefty cash inputs into research and development.

China increased its R & D spending in 2009 to US $25.7 billion, a 25.6 percent increase over 2008, according to Du Zhanyuan, vice minister of the Ministry of Science and Technology. China is rapidly closing the science funding gap with Japan: in 2009 it allotted US $37.1 billion for R & D.

The times have never been better for those with new ideas in the global South.

And it’s not just big companies that are involved. There is R & D going on at ground level as well. African inventors, innovators and creatives met in Nairobi, Kenya in August as part of the Maker Faire Africa 2010 (http://makerfaireafrica.com). This is research and development on a shoestring, and done in a very practical, problem-solving way. While Africa’s inventors and innovators lack the big budgets of other economies, they are not short on ideas and drive.

The Maker Faire Africa is a family-friendly gathering where the inventors can showcase their work and connect with others. It is a mix of workshops, tips on business skills, awards and a party.

The global economy thrives on innovation and so-called ‘creative destruction’ – as economist Joseph Schumpeter called it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction) – that takes place as out-of-date technologies and ways of doing are surpassed by better ideas and more efficient methods. The power to innovate is the deciding factor for sustained economic growth.

The philosophy behind Maker Faire Africa 2010 – the brainchild of ‘venture catalyst’ and entrepreneur Emeka Okafor (http://timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com) – is to prove that innovation doesn’t just happen with computers.

As its website says, “The aim of a Maker Faire-like event is to create a space on the continent where Afrigadget-type innovations (http://www.afrigadget.com), inventions and initiatives can be sought, identified, brought to life, supported, amplified, propagated, etc.”

Maker Faire Africa is working with research organizations like Ghana’s Ashesi University (http://www.ashesi.edu.gh/index.html) and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (http://www.knust.edu.gh/pages) “to sharpen focus on locally-generated, bottom-up prototypes of technologies that solve immediate challenges to development.”

In the end, the goal of engaging all this creative and inventive energy is to spur Africans towards building “a manufacturing base that supplies innovative products in response to market needs.”

This initiative stands out in several ways: it is truly inspiring, it gets to the core of how wealth is created, and helps build communities of innovators and inventors to tackle the problems facing Africa – and humanity.

“We have a broader variety of makers this time around,” says Emeka Okafor of the 2010 Maker Faire. He notes makers are bringing more complex systems to the Faire, rather than just single devices. And that they “have more makers who are actually from the region.”

“Maker Faire Africa is essentially a platform whereby innovators, inventers, creative types, across all disciplines, share ideas, showcase their products, interact with attendees and other makers,” he continues. They “begin the process of building what we think is an essential community of what I like to term the productive class. That is essentially where we see ourselves playing a key role. A productive class whose foundation is laid upon building problem-solving systems.”

Okafor believes Africa just doesn’t “have enough wealth creation as we should.”

“We have things backwards. … One of the essential steps is that you had productive systems that allowed those countries (Asia and Europe) to create wealth. And they had to draw those resources from within.

“We see Maker Fair Africa celebrating resources that we already have, with knowledge from within and outside.

“In many ways the Makers as we see them, epitomise the very sense of problem-solving that as a society acquires more of it, it begins to deal with its challenges very differently. And not look elsewhere in terms of dealing with its challenges. We want to make our Makers sexy, we want to make inventors sexy, innovators celebrities.”

Some of the inspiring inventors from this year’s Faire include Norbert Okec from Uganda. His prototype for a solar powered street lighting system comes straight from his frustration with the traffic lights of Kampala, Uganda. Many don’t work and so he has developed a prototype solar-powered traffic light using a mix of recycled local parts and some LEDs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-emitting_diode) brought by a friend from China.

He hopes to produce an e-book on his invention to share with other inventors. He was joined by fellow inventors working on a dashboard for managing wireless networks, how to recycle plastic parts, solar-power torches, water and sanitation products, junk art, community cookers, sculptures, eye glasses, bicycles, and an automatic lighting system for homes.

Okafor is a passionate advocate of the Maker philosophy and how it changes the game: “…building is equivalent to making and making is a joyful thing, it is an interesting thing. It is a very satisfactory thing. It is not work. Most of the individuals around here have the biggest smiles on their faces. They don’t see what they are doing as work.

“The fact they are sitting next to other people like them if anything is one of the biggest take-aways for them. Because for some of them they were toiling away on their own. Now they see others like them. And they realise they aren’t crazy.

“When you build a community and the community begins to get stronger and sustain itself, all the other things come naturally: businesses get formed, partnerships happen: and then everything else people look for first…actually begins to happen.”

And Africa’s future prosperity is what is at stake at the Faire: “There is a market for the products. And we believe as more individuals – Africans and otherwise – come into contact with what is on display, they will come to see their own societies differently. ”

Published: September 2010

Resources

  • Flickr photo gallery: A clickable archive of the Maker Faire inventors and their inventions. Website: http://www.flickr.com/groups/makerfaireafrica/pool/
  • Afrigadget: ‘Solving everyday problems with African ingenuity’: This blog never ceases to amaze and fascinate. Website: http://www.afrigadget.com/
  • Afrobotics: A competition for African engineering students to develop robots. Website: http://www.afrobotics.com/
  • International Development Design Summit: The Summit is an intense, hands-on design experience that brings together people from all over the world and all walks of life to create technologies and enterprises that improve the lives of people living in poverty. Website: http://iddsummit.org/
  • Butterflyworks: A social design studio using design to make social change. They use media, social branding and experiential learning to share knowledge, trigger creativity and build sustainable businesses. Website: http://www.butterflyworks.org
  • AshokaTECH: AshokaTECH is a blog about technology and invention within the realm of social entrepreneurship. It aims to find, support, and celebrate social innovators whose technologies offer fresh, effective approaches to advancing social change. Website: http://tech.ashoka.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. 

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 2022

Categories
Archive Development Challenges, South-South Solutions Newsletters Southern Innovator magazine

Berber Hip Hop Helps Re-ignite Culture and Economy

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

Music is being used to revive the ancient language of the original North African desert dwellers, the Berbers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berber_people). And in the process, it is spawning a whole new generation of entrepreneurs and generating income. 

The Berbers are North Africa’s indigenous people, primarily living in Morocco, Algeria, Libya, and Tunisia, but their language and culture – called Amazigh – were replaced as the lingua franca of the region after the Arab conquest in the 7th century. But all these years later, the language is enjoying resurgence under Morocco’s king, Mohammed VI, who is helping to promote the language through television programming and a new law making teaching of the language compulsory in schools by 2010.

Amazigh people – the name means “free humans” or “free men” – total more than 50 million. Their group languages, called Tamazight, are spoken by several million people across North Africa, with the largest number in Morocco.

For young Moroccans, promoting the language is more interesting when hip hop (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hip_hop_music) is thrown into the mix. 

Where once Berber culture was shunned in Morocco and the language banned in schools, the revival of the Tamazight language has led to a flourishing of summer arts festivals, thriving Tamazight newspapers _ and Tamazight hip hop.

One hip-hop outfit, Rap2Bled from the Moroccan city of Agadir, stick to social issues, singing about unemployment, drug addiction and the emancipation of women.

“My mother and grandfather don’t know any Arabic…Before they couldn’t watch television, read a newspaper. They hadn’t got a clue what was going on in the world. They didn’t know anything,” Rap2Bled singer Aziz, who goes by the street name Fatman, told to Radio Netherlands Worldwide.

“But now there is a TV channel in our local dialect and a newspaper. But our aim is to put the language on the map by fusing it with hip hop. More than 60 per cent of young Moroccans only listen to rap and western music. So we thought why not fuse Berber with that and make it really accessible?”

Just 10 years ago, rap and hip hop were virtually unknown in Morocco, with only a small group of hip hop aficionados listening to big American stars like Dr Dre, Tupac Shakur and Notorious BIG.

But today hip hop culture and way of life (of which rap and hip hop music are a part) have become a powerful force in Moroccan culture. Moroccan rap focuses on local issues like unemployment and injustice and is ubiquitous on radio and TV.

The Casa Crew, from Casablanca, has become so successful since their beginnings in 2003 that their fan base stretches to Spain and Algeria.

“First of all, to designate rap simply as mere ‘music’ deprives it of its real impact,” Caprice from the Casa Crew (http://casa-crew-00.skyrock.com/), told the Arab Media News, Menassat. 

“Rap is a life style, and mainly a culture of convictions. The fact that rap is spreading in countries like Morocco is an excellent sign. On the one hand, it’s proof that the youth are starting to react, to think they have the right to express themselves in any way they see fit, without anyone judging them or denying them of that right. On the other hand, the development of rap means that the space for artistic freedom is growing particularly when considering that a majority of Arab rappers are dealing with subjects that we were forbidden to speak about a few years ago.”

The Amazigh revival industry centres around large music festivals. Timitar Festival in Agadir (http://www.moroccofestivals.co.uk/timitar.html) gets crowds surpassing 500,000, with more than 40 artists. Morocco’s biggest festival helps Amazigh artists meet world musicians and learn how to reach music fans outside of Morocco.

Another pioneer of Morocco’s music industry is Mohamed ‘Momo’ Merhari, a young music entrepreneur and winner of the British Council’s International Young Music Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2008 (http://www.creativeconomy.org.uk/).

Momo is a music consultant and co-founder of the “Boulevard des Jeunes Musiciens” (http://www.boulevard.ma/), the largest contemporary music festival in North Africa, featuring 50 bands over four days, and reaching a live audience of 130,000 people. The annual event showcases new talent from the worlds of hip hop, rock and jazz fusion from all over the region.

In January, Morocco’s culture minister Touriya Jabrane promised to introduce a range of measures to financially support Moroccan musicians, composers and the industry as whole.

Published: March 2009

Resources

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/02/african-afro-beats-leads-new-music-wave-to-europe/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/17/cashing-in-on-music-in-brazil/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/12/18/disabled-congolese-musicians-become-world-hit/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/11/09/mauritanian-music-shop-shares-songs-and-friendship/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2020/12/17/mongolias-musical-entrepreneurs-led-way-out-of-crisis-2018/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2023/02/07/mongolian-rock-and-pop-book-mongolia-sings-its-own-song/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/11/09/ring-tones-and-mobile-phone-downloads-are-generating-income-for-local-musicians-in-africa/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/11/09/taxis-promote-african-music-beats/

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

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

Categories
Archive Development Challenges, South-South Solutions Newsletters

Reality Television Teaches Business Skills in Sudan

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

Learning how to thrive in a market economy does not necessarily come naturally. But for young people who have grown up under a different economic system or known nothing but economic chaos, learning business skills can give them the tools to get on in life.

With youth unemployment rates high around the world, it is clear many young people may never get the jobs they expect unless they start businesses themselves.

In 2013, 73.4 million young people were out of work, an increase of 3.5 million from 2007. A report by the International Labour Organization (ilo.org) found persistent unemployment around the world in the wake of the global economic crisis, a proliferation of temporary jobs and growing youth discouragement in advanced economies; and poor quality, informal, subsistence jobs in developing countries. School-to-work transition surveys of developing countries showed that youth are far more likely to land low-quality jobs in the informal economy than jobs paying decent wages and offering benefits.

High youth unemployment often has nothing to do with poor educational achievement (many unemployed youth have high school educations or university degrees), but is often caused by other factors, including lack of access to capital, rigid labour markets, skills mismatched to demand in the economy (for example construction and building trades), or a gap between personal aspirations and the true state of the country’s economic development.

But rather than despair, it is possible to show youth how to turn things around and use business skills to re-shape economies in their favor. Youth tend to bring to the economy energy and drive combined with new ideas and experiences calibrated to the demands of the 21st century. By harnessing this, youth can find a unique space in the marketplace. In turn, young people can lead in reviving damaged economies and making their countries wealthier and healthier. Many youth have grown up around the emerging digital economy and the use of mobile phones. Being comfortable with the 21st century digital economy will unleash many economic opportunities that favor youth.

The British Council says that “creative entrepreneurship is considered the most efficient model for youth in the developing world who are facing huge difficulties in finding employment”. The entrepreneurship or creative investment industry is one of the fastest-growing sectors in the world.

Understanding what works for youth business entrepreneurship has become a specialty in its own right. Using the media to teach skills and inspire youth to action is one proven approach.

One recent example is a successful television programme from the Republic of the Sudan. Called Mashrouy (mashrouy.com), it is modeled on reality TV programmes such as The Apprentice, which features serial U.S. entrepreneur Donald Trump (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00q3fkq) and the BBC’s Dragon’s Den (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006vq92), where contestants pitch their ideas to a panel of judges to see if they can get funding for their business idea.

In Mashrouy, 12 contestants battled it out to see who had the best business idea. They undertook various challenges and the original 12 were whittled down to three contestants. Live on air in December 2013, viewers voted for their favorite contestant and the winner (https://www.facebook.com/Mashrouy) received a prize of 200,000 SDG (US $35,211), while the second prize winner received 150,000 SDG (US $26,408) and the third prize winner received 100,000 SDG (US $17,605). All three were then taken to London in the United Kingdom to meet other creative entrepreneurs and receive valuable business advice.

The Sudanese show (http://sudan.britishcouncil.org/our-work/mashrouy) is supported by the British Embassy and the British Council, and is working with the Sudanese Young Businessmen Association and major Sudanese companies to spread the idea of entrepreneurship among the youth of Sudan.

Sudan suffered a brutal civil war on and off throughout the 2000s, leading to the partition of the original country into the Republic of the Sudan and the new nation of South Sudan in 2011.

Faced with Sudan’s serious youth unemployment – as high as 34 per cent – and a fragile economy, the TV show’s producers wanted to encourage youth to start businesses.

The contest was aimed at youth between 18 and 40 and appeared on the Blue Nile (http://bnile.tv/blue.html) channel.

“At a time of national economic hardship, it has kindled the imagination of Sudanese youth,” wrote journalist Isma’il Kushkush (https://twitter.com/ikushkush) in The New York Times.

For the show, a panel of experts picked 12 projects out of 2,500 applications. Each of the 12 finalists was given a chance to do a “pitch,” giving a quick summary of their business idea and trying to get the panel excited about the idea and its potential. The idea that generated the most excitement won.
The 12 pitches included an idea for an ostrich farm and a plan to export spicy peanut butter. The winner, 32-year-old Samah al-Gadi, wants to use a locally available weed-like river plant to make bags and furniture. She said she got up the courage to be on the show from a supportive mother.

“Amid ululations, screams and clapping, a jubilant Ms. Gadi raised both hands above her scarf-covered head, flashing victory signs,” The New York Times said. “Her mother, sitting at a dinner table, was brought to tears.”

The women-owned social enterprise Making Cents International (makingcents.com), based in Washington, D.C., USA, has been gathering resources on youth entrepreneurship since 1999. It has put together a custom “curricula to develop the mindset, skillset, and toolset that enable entrepreneurs and enterprises to participate in profitable markets; financial institutions to serve new populations; and individuals to obtain meaningful work”.  This is available in 25 languages. It also hosts the Global Youth Economic Opportunities Conference in Washington, DC, held this year from 6 to 8 October 2014 (http://youtheconomicopportunities.org/conference).

Published: April 2014

Resources

1) Khartoum Teaching Centre: The British Council is a world leader in English language training and teaching. It offers general English courses for adult learners of all levels, totaling 60 hours of tuition over 10 weeks. Website: http://sudan.britishcouncil.org/learn-english/courses

2) Start-up Chile innovation fund: Start-Up Chile is a program created by the Chilean Government, executed by Corfo via InnovaChile, that seeks to attract early stage, high-potential entrepreneurs to bootstrap their startups in Chile, using it as a platform to go global. Website: startupchile.org

3) Global Youth Economic Opportunities Conference 2014: From 6 to 8 October Youth entrepreneurship conference in Washington, D.C., USA. Website: youtheconomicopportunities.org/conference

4) Making Cents International: The Youth Economic Opportunities learning platform is the first community of practice and knowledge exchange portal developed by and for the youth economic opportunities sector. Website: youtheconomicopportunities.org

5) Mongolian Rock Pop book: A book published by UNDP in the Mongolian language on how the country’s rock and pop musicians led on business innovation using creative marketing and publicity during the country’s turbulent transition during the 1990s. Website: http://tinyurl.com/p25scqq

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-2/

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