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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Panel: African Invention – what drives innovation on the continent?

Dominic Wanjihia, Kenya

Nana Aquah Kofi, Ghana

Emeka Okafor, Nigeria

William Kamkwamba, Malawi

Impediments of innovation

• The old generation has a mindset not trusting the youth and not encouraging them to try things
• Teachers are often not too creative, curious pupils are often shut down
• Often education is seen with an end – a degree

Advice

• Delivering constant quality is hard but quality is the key for international recognition
• Look at your neighbours (Mala, Cameroon, …) before seeking approval internationally
• Look at what people do, rather than what degree they have

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Panel: Dissemination, Models for Technology Diffusion

Erik Hersman, AfriGadget

Amy smith, IDDS

FabLab Ghana

FabLab Kenya

Engineers for change

IDDS: Create prototypes, not papers; create technology and technologists

Engineers for change:

• repository for problems and solutions
• project management & communication tool
• network for engineers internationally

There is no mechanism with which to share best practices

Often people just can’t invest in new technologies because the capital and time is scarce

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Scott Fifer – Go Campaign Prize Announcement

NGO supporting projects helping children – the future of Africa depends on the future of its children

Scholarship for makers organizing workshops

• gocampaign.org

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Makers show & tell

IDDS – playground power team

Notes from IDDS final presentation

Is this being disseminated and how?

• Thinking about using the merry-go-round for advertising
• Approaching school systems

What was the biggest challenge?

• making it cheap

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Jodie Wu

Just finished MIT, talking about a project started 2 years ago

Technology to shell maize

• bicycle used for that purpose
• bike-device was rented and payed itself off in 20 days
• right now – create an interface for the bike to attach any technology to it
• globalcyclesolutions.com

How about releasing the designs – when you actually want to make profit?

• the basic technology has been around for hundreds of years
• I see it as a success when people are copying it

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Panel: From invention to investor – getting venture finance to perfect your idea

Emeka Okafor

Mark Grimes, NedSpace

Nii Simmonds, Nubian Cheetah

Problem in Africa: many inventions don’t get investment easily, the investment market is quite underdeveloped currently

Kiva.org is a great idea – allowing everybody to look at entrepreneurs in various countries and invest in their business

People talk about technology – but we need to look at basic stuff

Also corporate social responsibility programs will not bridge the gap – as big companies will not fund their ultimate opponents

Due to the crisis now is the time to make money – and eventually make the world a better place

Africa is open for business (Carol Pineau) and not different to other continents

Challenges

• funding – one reason why this event is hold
• support from experiences person – platforms such as Nedspace provide a solution
• having an office – a company address

One model is to look at others and adapt their behavious to your environment