Next Generation of Innovation for the Grassroots

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.

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Published: October 2007

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.  

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

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

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

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

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

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Grassroots Entrepreneurs Now Have Many Ways to Fund their Enterprises

In the past, African entrepreneurs were extremely limited in the options for funding their plans. They had to rely on often ineffective national banks or local networks based on political, tribal or family connections to secure funding for enterprises. That has now changed, and there is an explosion in new thinking on business start-ups and how best to help grassroots entrepreneurs.

Concepts such as socially responsible investing, social enterprises and fair trade have opened up new frontiers for business development. All focus on the so-called triple bottom line: people, planet, profit. Economist Milton Friedman’s refrain that the only social responsibility of business was to increase profits, is being proven wrong. Some even go as far as to say social enterprise is the model for the 21st century.

“There’s lots of money to be made here,” said James Baderman of What If, an innovation company in the UK that employs 300 people and devotes 10 percent of its profits to helping social enterprises develop and grow. “There are huge opportunities; just look at the double-digit growth in fair trade and organic goods over the past decade. Consumers are increasingly making choices based on the ethical nature of products.”

Many in the social enterprise movement believe breaking the cycle of poverty and economic stagnation requires more than charity; it requires the creation of sustainable businesses that will pay local taxes and employ local people. They have also adopted and adapted the techniques used by multinational companies to improve the desirability of their products. A key part of these new socially responsible businesses is branding and marketing.

In Kenya, the UK’s Traidcraft (www.traidcraft.co.uk) – an organization that fights poverty through a wide range of trade-related activities combining a development charity with a trading company – is working with the Kenya Organic Agriculture Network to develop markets for Kenyan herbs, spices and related products in local and international markets. These include gums, resins (e.g. frankincense), herbs such as coriander, oregano, garlic and lemon grass; spices such as paprika, chillies, rosemary, lemon balm, and essential oils such as pepper tree oil, sinoni oil, and megalocapus oil – all grown in marginalised, arid areas.In another development focused on Kenya – but applicable across Africa – is being led by the UK-based Mark Leonard Trust (http://markleonard.net/). Called the Mainstreaming African Crafts project, it seeks to boost demand for Kenyan craft products in the UK market. It will build demand by focusing on growth areas (such as baskets, jewellery, leather), emphasizing the distinctiveness of African craft products and support product development in line with identified market trends. The aim is to launch a branded Kenyan product range at an international trade fair in 2008.

Along with improving the branding and marketing of social enterprises and fair trade businesses, funding options are becoming more varied. One new source of funding for budding social entrepreneurs is the William James Foundation’s 4th Annual Socially Responsible Business Plan Competition. It awards winners who develop business plans that blend people, planet and profit together with over US $40,000 in cash and expert advice to make sure it is spent well. Past winners have included business ventures as varied as an Afghan company that sends SMS text messages on security alerts, to others making hand-made organic clothing and portable vaccine packs for remote areas.

“We’re at a tipping point wherein the entrepreneur who builds in long-term values of sustainability is the one who will be successful,” said Ian Fisk, executive director of the William James Foundation and a long-time sustainable business activist through Net Impact (http://www.netimpact.org/index.cfm). “Most of what people think of as environmental and social activism in business is simply long-term thinking about energy costs and human resources. There are thousands of good ideas out there. The foundation wants to find those that are attached to solid business plans and help them succeed.”

The success of this approach has also attracted the attention of multinational companies like the oil company Shell. At the Shell Foundation (www.shellfoundation.org), they look at all the enterprises they support from a hardnosed, business perspective. Rather than seeing a producer who needs to produce, they look first at the market and the consumer, and then work backwards to get the producer to make the appropriate products that will sell. “No micro-enterprise is sustainable unless there is a viable route to market,” said Sharna Jarvis, Programme Manager for the Shell Foundation. “The problem with the standard model for micro-finance is that it begins with the producer, not the consumer. It is all about what someone wants to make – there is not enough emphasis on whether anyone will buy it.”

A new internet search engine has also been launched that is seeking a new way to create a steady flow of funds to nonprofit enterprises working to reduce poverty. Called GoodSearch (www.GoodSearch.com), it plows 50 percent of its advertising revenue (about a penny a search) back into nonprofits selected by its users. Powered by the well-known portal Yahoo!, if for example 1,000 supporters just searched twice a day, it would raise US $7,300 a year for an organization.

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Published: February 2007

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.  

Follow @SouthSouth1

Google Books: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=7H6VBgAAQBAJ&dq=development+challenges+february+2007&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/DavidSouth1/development-challengessouthsouthsolutionsfebruary2007issue

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

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

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

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

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

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.