Notes from the Maker Faire Africa 2009 in Accra, Ghana from Friday 14th to Sunday 16th August.

Follow the MFA09 aggregator on Maneno.

MFA09 program available here.

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Welcome speech

Nii Simmonds

The event was a journey and a collective effort

People that came here are

• makers
• engineers
• academics
• people that understand – Africa really needs to take off

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Emeka Okafor

This is a networking opportunity, especially for Africans

The event is about

• energizing
• amplifying
• elevating
• disseminating

what already already appears, fostering entrepreneurship, but also having fun

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Makers Show & Tell

William Kamkwamba – created a windmill producing electricity on his own in rural Malawi

• movie: moving windmills
• you have to start with a first step
• hopefully we come up with finding out about innovations as great until Sunday

Where did the idea come from?

• 2001 – hunger in Malawi, no money for going on to school
• -> reading books to keep up with colleagues, especially diagrams
• picture of windmill
• got stuff from the scrap place and just started building one
• Later – applying knowledge acquired from travel to the US – building a bigger windmill to pump water

What happens if something breaks?

• Williams cousin knows how to repair stuff
• more people want to learn it, one already built an own working windmill

Where do the things come from?

• most things are locally available

What’s next?

• short term: teaching people
• long term: commercial company

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IDDS – refridgerator team

Notes from IDDS final presentation

How was working with the community?

• was the greates part, many ideas/advice, great feedback
• they tried stuff out and helped in testing -> fostered innovation

Which design principles?

• Direct feedback by endusers
• Co-creation
• Letting users see and try it – exploring & improving

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Pat – multi machine

Nowadays everything has to be built using a machine tool – which are very expensive

Multi machine:

• device which is easy to build
• combines several machine tools
• using old (from 1830s) technology
• anybody can build it

There are no actual plans but there is a DVD with instruction -> which is handed out for free

Feedback of people?

• it’s built all over the world
• the machine can be used for virtually anything
• now working on a treadle mechanism

Q & A

William: what were the difficulties with the first prototype?

• didn’t convince the community, only the family
• had to get the old bicycle of his father

Pat: which website?

• Yahoo group: multimachine newsgroup

IDDS team: where is everything documented?

• http://2009.iddsummit.org/

William: things that didn’t work and had to be redone?

• couple of things: eg bicycle chain went off all the time

William: what are the costs for a windmill and how many people does it serve?

• about 50$, Williams family can live from it & it is used for charging mobile phones

General advice:

• Pat: Persistence is vital
• IDDS team: Sometimes the problem has to be reformulated

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Amy Smith – founder of IDDS, D-Lab

Involving everybody in a design activity

5 water sachets -> build something from it!

Various solutions of the teams