Peasant farmers are not the first group that come to mind when thinking about innovation but Mr. Frederick Msiska of Nchenachena in the Henga Valley of Northern Malawi is an innovator and in more than just one way. Mr. Msiska, who only attended school until the 5th grade, is a peasant farmer who also happens to be an inveterate inventor and a tinkerer. Among his many creations, he has designed and built a biogas converter for his toilet that he uses to produce electricity. He has also built a cell phone charger of his own design, a fan for his home, both of which use the electricity that he produces as well as a chemical sprayer for use on his farm.
Mr. Frederick Msiska
Of his inventions and what it took to make it so, he says “I looked around and I found that certain things were missing in my life so I studied very closely things that the government supplies. I made them myself through trial and error. I just kept trying, trying, and trying until they eventually worked.”
On the wall of the office of Frederick Msiska: a to-do list of things he plans to do -
'Zinchito Mu 2008' (Work in 2008) - Kuzenga office (Build office) - Kupanga Luso ( Make things with my skills) - Kupanga Sipuleya (Make a sprayer) - Kupanga fani (Make a fan) - Kupanga magetsi (Make electricity) - Bio-gas light
Frederick is also a “lead farmer” – a designation local government gives to thought leaders in agriculture in an area who give advice and direction on best farming practice and techniques. He is also known around his area as the “Doctor of crops” due to his farming expertise and adoption of every sustainable farming techniques he comes across.
Frederick on his farm / at his macademia tree nursery and with his self-made chemical sprayer
Mzamose Gondwe, who runs the blog African Science Heroes spoke to Mr Msisaki and was distraught to learn that he has taken apart his biogas toilet due to (unwarranted) fears about imprisionment after word came out to him about the travails of another rural inventor, Gabriel Kondesi. Gabriel who has invented a radio station using an old cassette player, Nokia cellphone, some electrical components and antennae. What he did not know was that the root reason behind this particular arrest was the running of a radio station without appropriate licensing, an ovresite that the licensing body, the Malawi Communication Regulatory Authority (MACRA) later fixed when the recognized Gabriel’s ingenuity and awarded him a license.
Mr. Msisaki is the picture of humility: when asked about his inventions and achievements, he presents the view that “… farmers do not contribute to national development, it is only those who are educated who contribute to development.” He story and achievements however are truly the epitome of what we profile here at AfriGadget with the focus that we have on the appropriate application of ingenious African technology in every day problem solving.
A pilot project placed an electonic collar containing GPS and GSM units on Kimani, a bull elephant who was the last surviving member of a 5 elephant group with a penchant for raiding farms to eat crops. This collar allowed park rangers to track the elephant’s movements using Google Earth / Google Maps. The project also allowed park authorities to monitor animal locations at all times and acted as a deterrent against the poaching of this important resource.
Crop raiding is a huge problem on farms bordering parks and reserves as a herd of elephants or other animals can wipe out entire crops on a single night destroying the livelihoods of the farm owners.
The coolest side benefit of the product though was when the project team figured out that they could create a virtual “geo-fence” and trigger alerts whenever Kimani the elephant stepped outside this virtual fence – an occurrence that indicated that he was probably on his way to a village to carry out some crop raiding.
The set up used a hardware and software solution that sends text based messages in real time with location data over GSM to park rangers whenever Kimani approaches a park fence that is close to a farm.
This is yet another great example of why the use of mobile phones continue to be the computing platform of choice in many ingenious and innovative homebrew technology solutions in Africa.
Click through the links below to articles and video about this project.
Morris Mbetsa, an 18 year old self-taught inventor with no formal electronics training from the coastal tourist town of Mombasa on the Indian Ocean in Kenya, has invented the “Block & Track”, a mobile phone-based anti-theft device and vehicle tracking system.
The system, that Mbetsa created by combining technology from projects that he has completed in the past, uses a combination of voice, DTMF and SMS text messages over cell-based phone service to carry codes and messages that allow control of some of a vehicles’ electrical systems including the ignition to manage vehicle activation and disabling remotely in real time.
Another feature of the system is the capacity to poll the vehicle owner by mobile phone for permission to start when the ignition is turned in real time as well as eavesdrop on conversation in the vehicle.
Mbetsa is now looking for funding to commercially develop his proof of concept and bring it to the market as reported on this video carried on the Kenya Television Network earlier this year.
This is quite an honor especially in light of the fact that AfriGadget is run entirely by volunteers. Good news though, our posting frequency should go up shortly as we have a team in the field sourcing stories right now.
As a primer to all things AfriGadget, here are links to our Flickr Group and Grassroots Reporting Project as well as a list of some of our favorite/most popular stories.
Simon owns and runs CraftSkills, a small business based in Nairobi, Kenya that focuses on designing and building self-sustaining renewable energy projects in places not accessible to the electric grid. Craftskills had to date undertaken challenging projects in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Cameroon and Rwanda among other places. Simon, whom AfriGadget first got to meet last summer at TED Global in Arusha, Tanzania, graciously agreed to conduct an email interview with AfriGadget.
AfriGadget: Could you tell us when and how Craft Skills got into the business of renewable energy in East Africa and the inspiration behind the organization?
Simon: CRAFTSKILLS was found in the year 2000 by myself. I was inspired by a challenge from my rural home where we have not had power for the last 40 plus years since [Kenya’s] independence [in 1963]. I come from a hill side village in Sagalla, Taita Hills in Coast Province where we receive quite some strong wind from the Nyika Plateau. This wind passes through without being tapped and sometimes our roofs can not stand in its way.
I started talking to people about wind turbines and how I can get an affordable one which I can make and produce for other needy people. When darkness falls in these villages plus the fog it is virtually impossible to travel the terrain at night.
AfriGadget: Tell us a little about the people behind Craft Skills and the staff who work for the organization.
Simon: I started with two workers. I could not afford to hire trained people so I decided to train myself first then train my two boys. Then I got a friend who repairs radios and TVs in Kibera to help me design and put together a charge controller.
Now we have a team of 20 people and other partners out there in the field with their staff totaling 50. We have technicians, welders fitters, fiberglass experts and engineers and sales people.
AfriGadget: What is the typical profile of a Craft Skills project? Who is your typical client and how are the projects typically executed?
Simon: Most of our clients are not the owners of the projects we put up. They benefit from the battery charging services in the wind/solar sites we put up with our partners. The low income earners who cannot afford grid power or are in settlements where grid power is unavailable. We take both to do the sites ourselves involving the people on the ground as partners. Others are home owners who have invested a lot on building good homes in non grid areas – these put up turbines for their own use like lighting, and pumping water from wells and boreholes. The other segment is the business people I market areas where there is no grid who put up turbines to run charging centres and sell power to other shops or run their off-grid businesses like lodges and hotels, schools and other institutions.
AfriGadget: Can you share with our readers some of the challenges that Craft Skills faces in executing your projects?
Simon: We have faced cultural challenges where we cannot put a turbine on the most ideal site due to beliefs on such sites hence we have to educate the citizens to allow us to do so or redesign the project and relocate. Another is the financial capability of the citizens we find in these off grid areas.
[As a result of this] we have designed low power product (battery bundles and LED lights) to reach them so that they can be counted as beneficiaries of this new technology.
AfriGadget: Why renewable energy? What is the rationale behind Craft Skills’ exclusive focus on projects that produce energy from renewable sources.
Simon: We were looking for something which is affordable and sustainable and cuts across the economic sectors. Solar was proving to be more expensive, delicate, sophisticated and easily stolen when installed on ones home. We needed to sell people more power at a cheaper rate hence wind was the best candidate.
Wind is everywhere just like solar – one needs to get the right spot to put the turbine as high as they can. Its 24 hrs (Day and Night) and we found a cheap way we could make our turbines take advantage of low wind situations with the multi-pole generator, hollow blades for the propeller, with 90 per cent locally available materials making our technology the best application for this region.
AfriGadget: Which would you say has been the most satisfying/gratifying project that you have been involved with at Craft Skills? What was so special to you about this particular project?
Simon: The Chifiri water pan project to me is most gratifying. This settlement is all arid land pastoral community. The demand for water for drinking washing and watering the thousands of livestock is enormous.
Our turbine provided a cheaper solution for water and lighting the “manyattas” around the water pan. The contractor on the ground is excellent on his construction of the earth dams. His design impressed me that water was going to be available for over 6 months instead of the normal 4 months after the rainy seasons. He made sure the dams were well compacted and fenced to avoid animals hoofing inside the dam – increasing the rate of percolation and lose of water in the ground. Water is only available at the kiosks which are piped and placed near the settlements. The project provides water troughs for the animals to drink from and bathrooms for the people to clean themselves in. Within the fenced dam there is an armed home guard or caretaker manning the place with a security light up the tower hoisting the turbine.
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