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Jul022015

3D Printing Gives Boy a New Arm in Sudan

Thursday, July 2, 2015 at 4:23AM

3D printing is rapidly going mainstream and is now starting to make a big impact in health care. One innovative solution is using the technology to manufacture artificial arms for amputees harmed by war in Africa.

While large-scale manufacturers use the machines to fabricate products and parts, from aircraft components to furniture, it is the smaller-scale use of 3D printing machines that has been getting many working in development excited.

3D printing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_printing) usually involves a desktop-sized fabrication machine that builds a three-dimensional object following instructions from a digital computer file. It is an additive process, in which material is laid down in successive layers to create an object. The technology has been around since the 1980s but only became affordable for the general public in the past five years. Typically, 3D printers are used to make prototypes — for example architectural models or machine parts — or to manufacture one-off objects without the need to turn to mass production methods. But the technology is evolving quickly and, according to The Guardian, “20% of the output of 3D printers is now final products rather than prototypes.”

For international development, 3D printing offers the potential to close the gap between what is available in developed and developing countries. Just as the Internet has closed the knowledge gap, and enabled people around the world to access news and knowledge at the same time, so 3D printing could make it possible for technological innovations to be available everywhere. Just upload the digital plans for an object, and people can download them and print the item, wherever they are.

Some of the more enthusiastic proponents of 3D manufacturing see it as a game-changer in access to technology. They argue it could eliminate material want and place the power of manufacturing in the hands of billions, in the same way the rapid proliferation of mobile phones and the Internet transformed access to information. That is the dreamers’ dream, but it is closer than many think.

The conflict in the new nation of South Sudan, which separated from the Republic of the Sudan in 2011, continues and involves UN peacekeeping forces (http://unmiss.unmissions.org). The violence has killed over 10,000 (International Crisis Group) and injured many more, ruining lives through lost limbs and capabilities. One young boy, Daniel Omar, 16, lost both his hands while trying to use a tree trunk to shield himself from an exploding bomb. Losing his hands was devastating enough, but he was also so depressed at not being of full use to his family that he wished he had died that day.

He is not alone in being harmed by the conflict. In total, an estimated 50,000 people in South Sudan are physically disabled, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
Prosthetic limbs are very expensive and so far are not a priority for medical services in the country. Saving lives is the priority, with rehabilitation an expensive luxury.

This is where Not Impossible Labs (notimpossiblelabs.com), based in Los Angeles, California, came in. The non-profit startup founded by Mick Ebeling specializes in “crowd-sourcing to crowd-solve previously insurmountable healthcare issues.” The solutions are then made public on the Internet and explained in online media to help innovators either replicate the solutions or be inspired to come up with their own ideas.

The lab’s ingenious solutions include BrainWriter – a way to draw using brainwaves and a computer mouse that can allow disabled artists to carry on creating. Not Impossible Labs also developed a high-tech cane for the blind that draws on sonar technology and a laser to navigate the terrain and foresee upcoming obstacles.

Emotionally touched after learning about Daniel’s plight, Ebeling decided to act.
“I’ve got three little boys,” Ebeling told The Guardian newspaper. “It was hard for me to read a story about a young boy who had lost his arms.”

Project Daniel (http://www.notimpossiblelabs.com/#!project-daniel/c1imu) set out to manufacture artificial hands for Daniel without him having to leave his country and his family. Daniel was living between the Yida refugee camp in South Sudan and his home in the Nuba Mountains.

A team from Not Impossible Labs set up the 3D printing lab in the Nuba Mountains and trained and supervised the local team to print two prosthetic arms. The design for the arm was done in the U.S. at its headquarters in Venice, California and is available for free and is open source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source). A “dream team of innovators” were assembled – including the South African inventor of the Robohand (http://www.robohand.net/), an Australian MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) neuroscientist and a 3D printing company owner from Northern California – to crowd-solve the challenge of making a 3D-printable prostheses. A precision engineering company, Precipart (precipart.com/home), and Intel were also drafted in to support the project.

Not Impossible believe the spirit behind the project will be globally transformative.

“We are on the precipice of a can do maker community that is reaching critical mass,” said Elliot V. Kotek, Not Impossible’s content chief and co-founder. “There is no shortage of knowledge, and we are linking the brightest technical minds and creative problem-solvers around the globe. Project Daniel is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.”

Daniel’s new artificial arm and hand took a 3D printer several days to make and cost around US $100.

In November 2013, Ebeling travelled to South Sudan with all the equipment required to “print” Daniel a new arm: 3D printers, spools of plastic and cables.

The plastic arm printed by the 3D printer works by allowing the wearer to flex what remains of their arm to pull various cables that act as ligaments, like in a real limb. When the user flexes and bends, the cables pull back and in turn make the fingers close and open.

It is not a solution for every amputee. “With the technology we currently have it’s hard to help people with no arm left,” said Kotek. “There needs to be at least a little bit of a stump.”

Shy at first, once Daniel saw the arm, he was transformed. “It was a pretty amazing thing to see this boy come out of his shell,” said Ebeling. “Getting Daniel to feed himself was a highlight that was right up there with watching my kids being born.”

Even more impressive has been the quick adoption of the technology by the local doctor, Dr. Tom Catena, who performs all the amputations in the area.

With two 3D printing machines left behind by Ebeling, Dr. Catena has been able to print a prosthetic arm a week.

The machines mostly work at night when it is cool. The printer parts are then assembled by eight local people trained to operate the machines and build the arms.

But how do they ensure, over time, this 21st-century technology doesn’t just fall into disrepair and neglect as has been seen time and again with other attempts at technology transfer? Weekly phone calls are made to check on the project and the plastic used to make the arms is sent directly from Not Impossible Labs.

And then there is community buy-in.

“At first these kids wanted arms that matched their skin tone, because they didn’t want to stand out,” said Kotek.

But in time the youths have been decorating the arms in many colors and customizing them. And the arms have been given a name: the Daniel Arm.

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Published: May 2014

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=NhQ9BQAAQBAJ&dq=development+challenges+may+2014&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/DavidSouth1/may-2014-development-challenges

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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Reality Television Teaches Business Skills in Sudan

Thursday, July 2, 2015 at 4:07AM

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).