Simple technologies make a big impact in Ghana

Usually, midsummer is the perfect time to take a nice, relaxing vacation. But this year, instead of smearing on sunscreen and lounging by the pool, Cooper Perkins’ own Harald Quintus-Bosz spent an intense two and a half weeks working to improve the lives of those living in the developing world at the MIT-organized International Development Design Summit (IDDS) in Kumasi, Ghana.

IDDS is a month-long collaboration that invites participants from different countries to “build technologies for communities in the developing world.” The participants’ days are packed with lectures, technology training workshops and brainstorming meetings in both the classrooms and the workshop. From these sessions, they are expected to conceive 18 design proposals that use simple technologies to improve the quality of life for the world’s poor. From that pool, 12 technologies are chosen and the group splits up into individual teams to continue the development. These technologies can have both an immediate and long-term impact.

Take for instance the high demand for charcoal. You will find very few electric ovens and stoves in Ghana, so the majority of people prepare their food over charcoal fires. The charcoal is harvested from local trees, which is causing rapid deforestation throughout the country and the rest of the continent. Despite this, trees provide an inexpensive fuel source for the one-third of the population that lives on under $2 a day. Corn, on the other hand, is renewable, common crop that can serve a dual role. Once consumed, the remaining ear’s dense-woody core can be pyrolysised then pressed into a brick using a simple machine developed by the IDDS crew during their visit. The charcoal press is simple to make with readily available material and can create up to 12 bricks per minute! Other prototypes developed during the summit included bamboo matchsticks, Shea nut oil extraction and a child-friendly light that charges during the day with solar energy.

Harald and the other IDDS coordinators spent the last year sorting through participants’ applications (ranging from doctors and scientists to clergyman and mechanics) and researching specific issues that plague the developing world. “Their problems are much more fundamental than ours,” explains Harald. “If something breaks, they can’t just go to the store replace it.” For the first time in the program’s three-year history, the 70-plus participants and 20 organizers did not gather on the MIT campus, but instead at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi. Bringing IDDS to Africa made it possible to directly reach out to the very people they are trying to help.

Once the team constructs a working prototype, they must put it to the test in a unique process. Each team made multiple trips (sometimes overnight) to a surrounding rural village to engage in demonstrations with and obtain feedback from the residents. With this vital input, they were able to further develop the prototype and address any other possible issues affecting the villagers.

During Harald’s first visit to the village of Mprim, there was a strong sense of skepticism from the people. Westerners had come and gone to the rural community before, making big promises but with no results. It was clear the team would have to prove themselves. They stepped up to the challenge by demonstrating a past IDDS project named the Corn Sheller. Traditionally the villagers popped off individual kernels from an ear of corn by hand, a process that takes a considerable amount of time. Harald placed an ear of corn in the cone-shaped device and gave it a few quick twists. Within a matter of four seconds, every one of the kernels showered to the ground and only a clean cob remained. “There was this huge applause,” beamed Harald. “It was like being on Oprah!” Women immediately lined up for a try. But rather than passing the sheller around, the team explained how the villagers themselves could make one by shaping a strip of sheet metal using the ridges of their fingers. Impressed, the village gladly lent their time to help with the IDDS’s four-week mission.

In another example, the team taught the villagers the advantage of recycling waste into reusable material. Mprim, like most villages in Ghana, does not have a running water system, so their drinking water mostly comes in sealed plastic bags. Once finished, the bags are dumped anywhere. The team came across large piles of plastics that could be put to good use. Since the bags were made of polypropylene, they are very easily manipulated with something as crude as a heated knife tip. Through this, the team created sheets of plastic that could be used to waterproof roof tops or be made into air cushions for transporting food. IDDS operates under a “teach a man to fish” mentality. The participants are not just there to aid, but to teach and inspire. “The people have a lot of time but that’s invested in farming, so they don’t have time to really innovate themselves,” says Harald. “So with our visit, we had the whole town thinking, ‘Hmm…What else could we do with this stuff?'” Through this interaction, IDDS hopes to stimulate creativity and innovation in the community long after they’ve left.