Recap of Maker Faire Africa
Editor’s note: PopTech Fellow Erik Hersman (whiteafrican.com”, afrigadget) took the FLAP (Flexible Light And Power) bag with him to Maker Faire Africa; below is a post on the event from Miquel Hudin, Director of Technology for Maneno, a blogging and communication platform being developed for Sub-Saharan Africa to work best on low bandwidth, high latency internet connections; he highlights many other projects that were highlighted in Accra. All images are courtesy Miquel Hudin.
I was fortunate to be one of the people able to attend the inaugural Maker Faire Africa held August 14-16 in Accra, Ghana. Created to be “a celebration of African ingenuity, innovation and invention” the fair brought together people from around Africa who are makers–those who set out to create something. While the tech scene in Africa has been getting a lot of attention these days and barcamps have been making good strides at bringing people together, the African maker has been largely overlooked.
Thus the initial organizing group of Emeka Okafor, Erik Hersman, Lars Hasselblad Torres, Mark Grimes , Nii Simmonds, Emer Beamer, and Henry Barnor set about to make this event happen.
Purposely timed to happen with the International Development Design Summit the days of the fair brought together an incredibly wide range of makers from those making their own radio station, to African ‘Barbie’ dolls, to furniture made out of recycled bottles,
to an “electric cream” heater, to a evaporation cooler for milk, to a groundnut thresher, to photographers, and a slew of others.
Everyone who was presenting what they made was able to show it off to media, locals, other makers, and even notable politicians like the former Finance Minister of Ghana.
It made for a packed three days of not only meeting the makers, but also watching presentations such as What drives innovation in Africa?, hearing William Kamkwamba (a windmill maker from Malawi) tell his story, and the launch of Afrobotics. If you want to read a larger selection of articles, you can visit this aggregator for the event on Maneno.org.
Was it rewarding and informative to be there? Absolutely. I recommend it to anyone looking to meet African innovators and creators. But beyond just showing what people were making, Maker Faire Africa is part of a larger trend comprised of many people (African and non-African alike) who are working to change the general perception of Africa for most people in the world.
Beyond the constant news of war, rape, starvation, and disease that international media amply provides, there is another, much larger side to Africa consisting of creation, innovation, and entrepreneurship that is ever so slowly being seen. With events like this it’s hoped that the process will be accelerated.
Looking to the future, the organizers have already started working the next Maker Faire Africa which is scheduled to be held in Nairobi, Kenya next year. The plans are for an even bigger event which will undoubtedly be a must-attend event given the solid tone and foundation they established with this first fair.
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