Wonder Cooking Stove to help Millions of poor people in Africa

 A ground-breaking cooker which could transform the way electricity is generated in the homes of people living in poverty has been successfully tested by Practical Action.

The international development charity, in partnership with a consortium of universities, has developed the Score-Stove, which combines fuel efficiency with state-of-the-art technology to change sound waves into electricity.

Practical Action the organisation founded by Fritz Schumacher use technology to solve problems faced by the world’s poorest people and the Score-Stove is typical of their work. The charity believes it has the potential to provide energy which could enable millions of vulnerable people to access better education and healthcare.

2012 is the UN year of sustainable energy for all and the organisation has pledged to make access to energy a reality for everyone by 2030. The development of these stoves will help deliver that goal.

The stove is approximately 60 cm square and around 70cms high and attached to a specially shaped pipe. The heat causes dozens of thin metal sheets with tiny holes to vibrate and produce powerful sound waves.

The sound waves travel into a speaker and cause it to flap at up to 70 times a second, moving an alternator which in turn creates electricity.

Already, it has undergone rigorous tests in homes and universities in Nepal, Bangladesh and Kenya. So far, the stoves have produced up to 36 watts of electricity. It is hoped they will eventually produce 50 watts.

Teodoro Sanchez, Score-Stove project manager for Practical Action, has just returned from testing a prototype in Kenya. He said: “This remarkable stove has the potential to drastically change the lives of people living in poverty around the world. It can bring electricity to people who have never had it - giving them reliable access to light, heat, education and healthcare for the first time in their lives. It is fuel efficient and although the sound inside the pipe is intense, it creates no more than an external hum.

“It has developed from our work to reduce deaths resulting from breathing in smoke caused by cooking on open fires in the home.

“We have been working with the university teams to design more efficient, less smoky cooking stoves and reduce the amount of wood needed to cook. But this project does that and more.”

The technology is the brainchild of Score-Stove project manager Paul Riley, from the University of Nottingham. He believes the product will be ideal for use in the developing world, where millions of people have no access to energy. Practical Action has been advising lab teams on how the stove can be used and assembled in the field.

He said: “We must adapt the lab version, taking into account local biomass fuels, types of pots and pans used to cook, along with the everyday tasks the unit will be required to do.

“It must also be produced affordably and locally. That means slight design modifications are needed in each area so that local materials can be used. We must preserve the excellent levels of performance that we’re seeing in our labs.

Watch-out for more stories from Practical Action.

Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

Introducing:

MILLENNIUM ICONS

Profiling Men and Women who reorder the world with their ideas.

One of the problems of this generation is the misunderstanding of purpose, and the world seems to be an earth without purpose, it explain why mankind now live life the way it comes totally sold-out to self centered spirit. The world’s architecture and celebrated civilization was influenced by visionary statesmen and women appointed with time to come together at such challenging times and reorder the world.

This is a story of a man with passion to affect the lives of more than two billion people living in poverty ... and taking practical contribution to help change their lives forever.

Testimony of a beneficiary

"We didn’t have any clean water and had to dig wells. The water I did find was often dirty which meant my family used to suffer from diarrhoea all the time. Now we have a solar powered water pump we don’t get ill anymore. I have enough clean water for my children, my animals and my crops. Soon I won’t be going to the market to buy vegetables – I will be going to sell my own instead." - Eshe, Kenya

The late economist Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher founded Practical Action in 1966 formally known as the Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG). Over the last 40 years they have supported millions of people like Eshe in Kenya to transform their lives. They have worked alongside people and partner agencies to come up with new solutions to old problems, such as podcast to disseminate animal health information to farmers in Zimbabwe. Or solutions to new problems, such as using ‘floating gardens’ for Bangladeshi farmers made landless by river erosion. The rafts are from the stems of water hyacinths and enable communities to grow food during the monsoon. Simple, Sustainable, Successful.

But we will not be talking about practical action organization today, we will be talking about the man Himself, Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher (16 August 1911 – 4 September 1977).

E.F. Schumacher was born in Bonn, Germany but his childhood and youth was spent in Berlin where his father was Professor of Economics. Schumacher's ideas were many and varied but closely interrelated. For sake of emphasis they have been categorized as follows -

Energy

Economics

Work

Size

Technology

Development

Organization and Ownership

Education

Traditional Wisdom and Religions

What should we do?

After experiencing hyper-inflation in 1920s Germany, he left Berlin in 1929 as a Rhodes Scholar to study economics at Oxford University, England and Columbia University, New York.  Returning to Germany in 1934, he decided that Hitler’s Germany was not for him. In 1936 he and his new wife left for England where they remained until the end of the war. Wartime was a formative experience. He was interned briefly as an enemy alien and then spent several years as a farm labourer, using the evenings to develop various economic ideas until he found employment at the Oxford Institute of Statistics. He wanted to be involved in Germany’s reconstruction after Hitler’s defeat.

At this stage Schumacher thought on a grand scale. He applied his essentially Keynesian economics to formulating what he called his ‘world improvement plans’. He met Lord Keynes and senior government figures and wrote leaders for British national newspapers. He thought of himself as a scientific rationalist and admired Marx.  When he returned to Germany in 1945, however, (joining the British Control Commission as an economist in 1946), the question of why a cultured and civilised country like Germany had succumbed to the evil of Nazism confronted him. It was not a question that scientific rationalism and Marxism could answer. He had to look elsewhere; a search that changed his life and way of thinking.

In 1950 he moved back to England to work for the British National Coal Board as Economic Adviser (and later Director of Statistics), a post he was to hold for the next 20 years. Here he recognised the crucial role of energy in all economic activity. As early as 1955 he began to warn against a world dependence on oil. At the same time he began to explore the possibility that truth went beyond what science could prove. Reading avidly on his daily train journey to and from work, his visits to Burma in 1955 and India in the early 1960s convinced Schumacher that Western technology was not the answer to world poverty. In 1965 he founded the Intermediate Technology Development Group (now Practical Action) to identify and provide appropriate levels of technology for developing countries.

In 1970 Schumacher left the Coal Board to devote himself to writing and lecturing. By this time he had become a leading voice in the emerging environmental movement, warning not only about a future energy crisis but also about the consequences of agricultural and industrial pollution. He traveled constantly and was sought out by heads of state and leading industrialists as well as many groups of alternative thinkers.

His key ideas are contained in his books Small is Beautiful and A Guide for the Perplexed, and, published post - humously, Good Work and This I Believe. He died suddenly in September 1977 shortly after making the film 'On the Edge of the Forest'

 

Meet the new Intl Children’s Peace Prize award winner

The International Children’s Peace Prize 2012 was presented to Kesz a 13 year old philipino at the Ridderzaal in The Hague. Of the three nominated children, who have all made extraordinary efforts in the area of children’s rights, the Expert Committee selected Kesz as the winner. He was awarded the prize by Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu.

Kesz received this award for his efforts to improve the rights of street children in the Philippines, where more than 246,000 street children are subjected to abuse, violence and child labour. Many of them also struggle to cope with major health issues. Kesz was in the same situation. He was severely abused and forced to scavenge at the dumpsite at the age of two. Three years later, he sustained burns on his arm and back, which forced him to run away and look for help. He has transformed his own experiences into a drive to help other street children and inspire them to change their own lives.

Kesz: “My message to all children around the globe is; our health is our wealth! Being healthy will enable you to play, to think clearly, to get up and go to school and love the people around you in so many ways. To everyone in the world, please remember that every day, 6,000 children die from diseases associated with poor sanitation, poor hygiene, and we can do something about it! Please join me in helping street children achieve better health and better lives.”

Gifts of Hope
For his seventh birthday, Kesz didn’t want any presents for himself. Instead, he wanted to give something to other street children: Gifts of Hope. That same year, Kesz started his own organization, Championing Community Children, aimed at giving street children hope and showing them that they can take their future into their own hands. Every week, he and his friends go to underprivileged communities to teach children about hygiene, food and children’s rights. He even takes things a step further, by teaching children how to teach each other. He has so far helped more than 10,000 children in his local area.

The ceremony

Kesz was presented with the prize by Desmond Tutu, the patron of KidsRights and the International Children’s Peace Price. According to Tutu, Kesz is a deserving and inspiring example of “a new voice for the voiceless”. Kesz was presented with the Nkosi, a unique sculpture which shows how a child can move the world. The sculpture symbolises the impact of the International Children’s Peace Prize: in recent years, millions of people have become aware of the prize, which offers Kesz a global platform to make his voice heard and tell his courageous story.

The ceremony was concluded with a special announcement by Mayra, who won the Children’s Peace Prize in 2008. A confrontational video message marked the launch of the Remember2015 movement, an initiative of KidsRights to breathe new life into the Millennium Development Goals of 2015 for children.

Thanks to http://childrenspeaceprize.org

Meet Zimbabwe’s Youngest University Student.

Young Celebrity from MOTHER Africa

Meet 14 year old, Maud Chifamba, Zimbabwe’s Youngest University Student.
Maud Chifamba is 14 years old but she is already studying Accountancy at the University of Zimbabwe. This whiz-kid lost her father nine years ago and her mother passed away last year, leaving her and her two brothers to battle through life. Her brothers being farmers could not afford to send Maud to a formal school, so she had to home school herself and did quite a splendid job with that.

While in Primary school she impressed the teachers so much that they moved her up three classes and took her final primary school exams at the age of nine. She finished her Ordinary Level in two years even after skipping two forms and went on to earn 12 points at her A-Level exams. Speaking about how the death of her parents has affected her, Maud said, “It really motivated me to work harder because there was no one to take care of me except myself in the future”.

Her intelligence is phenomenal and so is her diligence. They have provided her with a four-year scholarship of nearly $10,000 after she excelled at last year’s Advanced Level exams. Maud speaks about life in the University and she says, “I’m really enjoying it. It’s better than what I expected. I’m just enjoying all the lectures.”

According to CNN, Munyaradzi Madambi, dean of students at the University of Zimbabwe, describes Maud as a “very warm and polite young woman,” whose intelligence and maturity shines through.

“(She is) confident, efficacious and unique in the sense that you don’t normally expect this position among kids from underprivileged backgrounds,” he says.

“We are making sure that she grows up to be a well-moulded, mature adult but of course without really suffocating her or putting her under any pressure,” he added.

Maud’s dream is to become an Accountant after graduation. With her determination and brains, the sky is the limit for this talented whizkid.

Source: CP-Africa.com

Meet Africa’s youngest Member of Parliament

Young Celebrity Stories from MOTHER Africa

Picture: 19 year-old Proscovia Alengot Oromait (left), Africa’s youngest MP, with her sister in Kampala on September 21. (Hilary Heuler/VOA News) 

Nineteen year old Proscovia Alengot Oromait has become Africa’s youngest Member of Paliament (MP), after beating eight other candidates to win the Usuk county election with 11,059 votes. She is a member of National Resistance Movement, headed by President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda.

Proscovia Alengot was sworn in on Thursday 20, September, 2012. She is the youngest and first female teenage Member of Parliament in Africa.She now takes on a position previously held by her late father, Michael Oromait, who is said to have died of natural causes in July prompting the byelection.

19 year-old Proscovia Alengot Oromait (left), Africa’s youngest MP, with her sister in Kampala on September 21. (Hilary Heuler/VOA News)
Alengot immediately expressed interest to replace her father, sparking off emotions of sympathy. She was elected flagbearer for the NRM party after she had won the party primaries a little over two weeks ago.

Hon. Alengot’s area faces challenges of clean water, electricity and poor roads among others. For now the people of Usuk have their hopes pinned on the 19 year-old MP. Hopefully, she will be in position to represent her area and develop it.

Several comments on various media platforms, especially the Monitor website, have followed her swearing in on Thursday, here are a few:

“I just have one piece of advice for the hon MP: Don’t worry, be happy. This might be the only time in your life to shine! Come next elections….who knows. Don’t forget your day job… I mean your studies. No one will give you a job with a CV with “ex-MP but no qualification”. Anyone can be an MP, but not everyone is educated. Congrats!!”

“Proscovia does not need too much advice. You guys are treating her like a baby. At 19 she’s an adult. Schooling began at home. Why is every man trying to be a parent to her? Leave this young woman alone to think critically for herself. It seems that there are too many cooks around. Proscovia actually has the figure of Michelle Obama. Tall, athletic, beautiful and confident. Michelle the first Black US first lady did not need too much advice on how to be a first Black first lady in the White House. Congratulations to Proscovia!”

Source: CP-Africa.com

Naija Stories

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From A Dropout To An ICT Billionaire: The Story of Wande Adelemo | Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of OXYGEN Broadband Networks, Nigeria’s first metro WiFi network

The STORY

“I am not saying it is good to drop out of school, but I am saying it is good to think outside the box. The emphasis on paper qualification in our society has not helped us. If school will limit you as an entrepreneur, get out; and if it will enhance you, stay with it.”

Wande Adalemo dropped out of the Olabisi Onabanjo University to actualise his dream of building an Internet service company, which is now worth N1bn.

He tells DAYO OKETOLA how it all started and what other young Nigerian entrepreneurs can learn from his journey.

The Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer, Oxygen Broadband Networks, Nigeria’s first metro WiFi network, Mr. Wande Adalemo, is a young man who aspired to be a university graduate and get a job. But an event in 1998 changed the course of his life and he decided to pursue his dream of building an Internet company.

Today, he sits atop a N1bn ($62.5M) broadband network company, which has just rolled out a WiFi network at the popular Computer Village in Lagos.

He said his greatest challenge was funding, but the driving force had been the passion to ensure that all Nigerians have access to affordable Internet access through WiFi technology.

From the ground zero in 2005, dropping out of school along the line, Adalemo said he overcome the challenge and was able to attract investors, who believed in his dream and invested in the business.

Adalemo said the company started with a $2m investment and as at today, had invested N1bn ($62.5M) with a network infrastructure already in place and duly licensed by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).

“As we speak, we are currently at the Computer Village in Lagos, where we have our pilot network. In the last two months since we started, we have had over 20,000 connections sitting on our network,” he said

In view of this, he said the company had laid out an expansion plan, which would see it invest another N200m ($1.25M) in rolling out services in six locations across Lagos State before the end of 2012.

“We are doing another N200m ($1.25M) investment and we are going to six new locations by December 2012. We are partnering with malls on the Island, Surulere, and high traffic restaurants. We already have agreements with all of these people,” he said.

The expansion, Adalemo said, would see Oxygen Networks expand to 20 locations in March 2013, and 100 locations in Lagos by 2015; and then Abuja, Port Harcourt and Kano, thereafter.

“Of the N200m needed to roll out services by December 2012, we have attained N75m equity investment to date, which means that we are really set to move to these new locations,” he said.

According to him, the company currently operates with 100 per cent private equity fund from the board of directors and “they are putting in more funds to see us expand.”

He said the company had already attracted institutional investors such as Google and Main One Cable Company, which were interested in investing in it and help boost broadband access in the country.

While the start-up appears to be on the right track, the Oxygen Broadband Network boss said the beginning was very rough.

In an interview with our correspondent on how it all started, he said, “I never saw a computer until 1998. I was with my cousin Femi Adalemo, who was the Chairman of the Nigerian Internet Exchange Committee at some points. So, I went to his office and he said he wanted to send a mail to someone in the United States. Five minutes after, the person in the US had responded to the mail and that surprised me.

“I couldn’t sleep that night, and in the morning, I went back to him and asked him to teach me how to develop something that will make Nigerians send and receive e-mails easily. I told him I wanted to do something that would make it easier for every Nigerian to send email.

“He told me it was networking and that was how it started. So, as I grew in my knowledge of what the Internet access and broadband were, it became more of a passion. Getting the technology was one thing, putting it together was another, and getting funding took a while. Between 2005 and now, you can see it has been seven years, it has not been easy.”

On how he got the first investor, who later became a co-founder of the company, Adalemo, said, “We had spoken with a thousand of individuals to put their money in the business and the answer we kept getting was no. Eventually, we found someone and it was an interesting story. We met the first investor, who later became a co-founder of the company, in 2005. I didn’t have a penny that day and then a friend of mine called and said there was someone that ‘is interested in this crazy idea of yours, let’s go and see him.’

“I had to trek from Iponrin to Ajose Adeogun to meet him. He was the managing director of a bank then. Meanwhile, I had met several potential investors who had discouraged me but I did not give up. So, when I got there, he told me; ‘If you cannot convince me in two minutes, I cannot invest in this because an idea that cannot hit someone in two minutes is no good idea.’ Well, I think I was able to hit him in two minutes and the next question he asked was how do we move?

“The first thing we did was to go around the world to see where WiMax was failing because my own idea was that WiMax will not work but WiFi will. So how do we get WiFi to work? And from there, he got some of his friends involved in the business.”

Adalemo reiterated that the company would continue to expand because he believed WiFi technology would play a major role in boosting Internet access in Nigeria.

He said, “Because we believe that everybody should be on the Internet and we are restricted by regulations as to how to expand (we cannot cover wide area), we decided to take the Internet to where everybody is going?

“Oxygen believes that your Internet should be wherever you are going and instead of carrying your modem or dongle around, if you know that Oxygen is present at the place you are going to such as the cinema, restaurant, clubs and malls, among others; then, it becomes a better option for you.”

According to him, the second phase of the company’s expansion will be the ASPANDA Market at the Lagos International Trade Fair Complex, Alaba and Oke Arin markets.

“For or us at Oxygen, we are taking our WiFi network to a point where we have a hots pot in virtually every major street in Lagos. It begins to tell us where we need to start focusing our attention in Nigeria. It also begins to tell us where we need to start building broadband ecosystems. We need to start looking at solutions that will enable people to just plug and deliver broadband services to everybody,” Adalemo explained.

He disclosed that the company had sealed a partnership with the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System Plc to provide its WiFi network for PoS connectivity at the Computer Village, adding that this was the driving force behind its planned extension into the Oke Arin Market.

“Due to our partnership with NIBSS, we are providing WiFi for the purpose of PoS terminals alone at Oke Arin Market. These are some of the plans that Google is excited about,” he said

Adalemo encouraged young Nigerian entrepreneurs not to be deterred by challenges surrounding them, while assuring them of success if they remained focused.

He said this was what made him drop out of school when he found out that academic works were disturbing his entrepreneurial drive.

“I will say that I am also a proud school dropout because at some point, I realised that pursuing academic excellence was interfering with my passion for this dream. May be Oxygen would have become a dream earlier but for exams in school,” he said

When our correspondent took him up on this, he said, “I encourage people to go to school, but once you find that dream, that passion that you can pursue and it is a good idea, you will succeed. Once you are dedicated, you will get there. It is not about everyone leaving school, it is about understanding what will work for you.”

Credits: OluFamous.com