Blog

Hanging out in Agbogbloshie

Posted on by ivyasuo

It’s not every day you get people agreeing to hang out in a place they consider a slum, particularly where its been labelled as a highly toxic area. On the 21st day of September 2014, for the second year running, the National volunteer’s day took place all over the country. Also known as founder’s day, is the birthday of the first president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah. The day was initiated by the Ghana think foundation as a way of encouraging the spirit of patriotic volunteerism among young people around the country.

The AMP team reached out to the public to help tell the story of Agbogbloshie. Even before physically meeting on the site on event day, the energy was high and the vibe on social media was intensive. Actually, we converged on social media, long before we did in Agbogbloshie. When we finally migrated from our digital space to real space, we converged in front of the national youth authority building, where filled with a high sense of purpose to make a difference, participants, without much prompting, initiated conversations between themselves and e-waste workers who had been interviewed by the AMP team. The eventual venue for the pre-event orientation was in the green advocacy office space, which it has benevolently made available for use by the national youth authority and the scrap dealers association.

20140920_113734

After brief introductions of AMP team and the executives of the Greater Accra Scrap Dealers Association, the activities of the day began in earnest. The activities for the day fell into three neat categories of :

Mapping: GPS locations of water sources, maker culture, electricity sources and food joints in the yard.

Spacecraft: Drilling of holes, leveling the ground and assembling of Octet trusses

Storytellers: Video recording of activities of some e-waste workers

Micro-architecture: Observe workspaces of scrap dealers

The volunteers comprised of freelance journalists, designers, architects, students, videographers and photographers amongst others. Participants volunteered to join one or the other category and all groups went out to undertake diligently their assignment for about two hours after which all conveyed back to the AMP site to help in assembling the spacecraft. The assembling of the spacecraft was centre stage for the day. The team had drawings of the makerspace mounted, while assembly proceeded. Once the community (e-waste workers in Agbogbloshie) got to know about our intention, they availed themselves and participated with enthusiasm in the tasks till the end. There was a lot of fun, as well as very relevant connections made. There was even a point where participants including the e-waste workers came together to sing.

DSC_0066

The volunteers were delighted to participate as they discovered a lot about Agbogbloshie. They made very interesting videos and took some pictures which some of them shared on blog posts.

The program has actually achieved its goals and through this AMP progressed on the building of the spacecraft. It also created an atmosphere for the community to socialize. The program helped in correcting this false notion of Agbogbloshie being just a land of pollution and dumb site in the mind of people. They realized that aside dismantling of electronic equipment there is also a lot of relevant maker and/or recycler culture.

20140920_114022

Volunteers Day Out

Posted on by Emmanuel K. Ofori-Sarpong

National Volunteers Day

AMP National Volunteers Day 2014
The stories we tell of ourselves affect our lives. At AMP, it has been our intention right from the onset to tell the untold stories of Agbogbloshie and its environs. Through mapping, interviews, photography and videos, we have sought to understand this vast and intense landscape, often denigrated by popular media reportage. By these tools, we intend to encourage and improve best practises, gradually eliminate the not so good and to transform the entire Agbogbloshie into a vibrant industrial hub. This year, as we commemorate founders day ( also National Volunteers Day) be part of this, process of transformation. If you are a storyteller, photographer or videographer, a computer programmer, own a smart phone or don’t belong to any of these categories and yet are a change-maker, this is your chance. Join the Agbogbloshie Makerspace Platform for National Volunteers Day. We are making interactive digital maps, videos and photo-journals, listening to untold stories and telling it to the world. We are educating e-waste workers on health, accounting, materials and design.

Register and help us bring change where it matters most. 

Activity Outline

8:30 am – Converge at Agbogbloshie

9:00 am – Orientation and meeting with Scrap dealers executives.

9:45 am – Division into teams — spacecraft, photography and videography, mapping, interviews (storytellers).

10:00 am – Activities Begin

11:30 am – Convergence and exchange of ideas – ( in the spacecraft)

12 noon –  Refreshment & Departure

About Agbogbloshie Makerspace Platform (AMP)

Agbogbloshie Makerspace Platform (AMP) is an experiment in youth-led R&D: a collaborative project to upgrade the quality of life and environment at Agbogbloshie, the largest e-waste processing site in Ghana. In actuality, Agbogbloshie may be the center, but the Accra-Tema scrap industry generally is much more distributed and has spatially many urban processing routes and clusters.

The AMP project seeks to create an alternate convention that links Agbogbloshie’s e-waste, scrap & recycling industry with the technical know-how and social entrepreneurial framework to itself remake the landscape, over time. The approach is to design and build locally a knowledge database and set of tools for e-waste processing and digital fabrication. The intention is to empower informal sector e-waste workers and their peer groups to rehabilitate the environment of Agbogbloshie and to help green the community’s current recycling practices. The short-term goal is to design and build a makerspace for the hyper-local context of Agbogbloshie, together with an open-source technology platform to support its operation. The long-term goal is to transform Agbogbloshie’s e-waste and scrap industry into a network for more advanced materials processing and small-scale distributed manufacturing.

[Full Day] AMP Up! Ghana National Volunteers Day 2014 from Brandon Rogers on Vimeo.

Jerry outreach

Posted on by ivyasuo

Could Agbogbloshie begin to supply low-cost upcycled computers to children in Old Fadama? Could this scope expand beyond this territory to other parts of Accra and to the under-privileged in Ghana? Could this net expand to cover the entire African continent? Imagine upcycled computers, supplied to all parts of the world from Agbogbloshie. There is a promising  future for this and needs to start somewhere.

As part of engaging the Agbogbloshie community and STEAM professionals, AMP organized a ‘maker workshop’ to teach e-waste workers how to make a Jerry and install software on it. After a rainy morning, the AMP team arrived in Agbogbloshie in the afternoon. Most of the work-spaces in the scrap yard were partially flooded. Being Friday, and a majority of the e-waste workers being Muslims, they had just arrived from the Friday afternoon prayers. Since prior arrangements had been made with Sam Sandow (AMP agent in Agbogbloshie) and Zack (E-waste worker), the workshop started in one of the computer shops in Agbogbloshie located near the entertainment center.  It is owned and operated by the Nigerian called ”Emeka”. The very same person from which components were sourced for the Jerry workshop in Kokrobite. The shop has shelves on which one would find hard drives,  mother boards, circuit boards and many others.

Emeka's computer shop in Agbogbloshie
Emeka’s computer shop in Agbogbloshie

Upon arrival, the team pitched tent and Daniel (AMP intern from  creativity group KNUST) briefly introduced the Jerry concept to the community.  After we explained the concept to Emeka, a monitor, keyboard and mouse, were made available for us to use.  He also gave us a compact disc (CD) with an operating system. The team  installed it and  allowed the participants to familiarize themselves with the Jerry whilst interactively exchanging ideas with the AMP makers collective.

It’s highly informative and exciting to think that, these same e-waste workers who are among the most marginalized and least literate are actually computer literate- and that some of them are even self-thought. This reveals how much youthful potential is being lost to class stereotyping and the resultant marginalization.

The team later presented the concept of the Quadcoper to the workers by Samuel Amoako (AMP intern and student from KNUST). It was then flown on the football field to demonstrate how it will help AMP map Agbogbloshie and also monitor air pollution levels.

_MG_8891
AMP collective on the football field in Agbogbloshie…About to fly the Quadcopter

All through history, some of the most fascinating discoveries have come about as a result of conversations between two unlikely parties or people from highly divergent backgrounds who would ordinarily not interact. The creation of a community space where such interaction can happen and spark new genius via the crafting of the  ground breaking ideas and objects is one of the central objectives of AMP.

As usual, the workers were busy with their activities: dismantling, loading trucks with scrap metals etc… but some were able to spend time with us and expressed their interest in making one themselves. One of the common questions asked was..whether the plastic will melt when the computer overheats? We answered them by discussing the physical properties of the type of plastic used, such as its melting temperature which is about 130oC and it’s combustion point which is between 340oC to 380oC. Another major concern was the market for the product and the price one should be sold. In effect they appreciated the fact that, parts of old computers can be sourced and used to make a server that works and are cheaper. The AMP team hopes to transfer the knowledge in assembling Jerry computer to making a Jerry Laptop (‘JerryTop’) in the near future.

IMG_5665

 

 

 

 

Listening to Agbogbloshie

Posted on by ivyasuo
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Sam interviewing e-waste workers in Agbogbloshie

Agbogbloshie has suffered incredibly from the single story syndrome, imposed on it by the media and those with the opportunity to tell its story. Beyond the e-waste, the burning and the hardship, that usually characterises the gruesome descriptions of this urban enclave and its surroundings, there are several industries and practices within this urban site that gives it the kind of rich urban flavour that the space has. One major way of way of dealing with this threat of the single story, is to engage directly with a people. To see through their eyes and to feel what they feel. At AMP, we have made it our lifetime goal, to change first, the story of Agbogbloshie, for “he wields power over you who tells your story”.

In the last few months, the AMP team have sought to hear the stories of e-waste workers in Agbogbloshie through the use of interviews. For us, these are the voices that should be heard. It is our primary aim, through these interviews, to give a voice to the voiceless, to inform the E-waste workers and invite them to be a part of the AMP makers collective. The team recruited and trained two of the e-waste workers (Sam & Iddrisou) to help with the process and they have been engaged in all AMPs activities for the past five months. They participated fully and performed tasks from translation to administering the questionnaires themselves as well as photographing the work spaces of the interviewees. As part of the interview process the team continued to map the e-waste landscape, this time, with specific reference to the interviewees and the location of their workspaces. From this data a detailed map of the Agbogbloshie ecosystem is being constructed. The process is helping the team better understand the working conditions of e-waste workers, the various relationships that exist between them, their future aspirations and the nature of the Agbogbloshie site itself. Hopefully, this will help the team better integrate their needs into the project. So far, over 500 workers have been interviewed. The interviews, which started in May 2014 and are still ongoing and have four main areas of interest:

  1. E-Waste Expertise 2. Training   3. Health Awareness and Practices  4. Aspirations

So far, certain patterns are beginning to emerge- majority of the population in Agbogbloshie are from the Northern part of Ghana especially towns and villages near Tamale, the lingua franca of Agbogbloshie is Dagbani, though some have good command of the English language, majority do not. Most of them dropped out of school at the Junior high school and primary (P5 & P6) levels.

E-waste workers engage in various forms of purchasing of equipment, disassembly, weighing and sale, and provide several tons of urban mined materials like copper.  There are also many industrious and entrepreneurial individuals who make highly useful objects. Indeed, Agbogbloshie is more than just an e-waste dump. During the survey we took  photographs  of some of the activities that go on in the yard and here is a field note.

Despite all of these very positive aspects of Agbogbloshie, there still remains the blight of filth and cable burning which means the risk of contamination and disease are highly pervasive. In general, there is a fair level of awareness about health risks amongst the e-waste workers. Thanks to the ubiquitous media coverage of that specific issue, e-waste workers are at least vaguely aware of the adverse effects of burning on their health. They however said that since it was their job, they felt as if they had no option than to do it. In reaction to this discovery on health, the AMP team have designed a utility shirt for the workers. When the second prototype of the utility shirt (the spacesuit) was showed them, e-waste workers insisted on the face gear (with possible embedded gas mask). It was observed that, workers in Agbogbloshie start their day early with the cart pushers, moving out early in the morning to source electronic equipment. Our discoveries provide us with information about Agbogbloshie but this is helping us understand the workings of informal communities, and people who are surviving on the “peripheries” of our awareness and yet contribute significantly to our lives. More than just an e-waste dump, Agbogbloshie is a huge open air manu-factory.

Made in Agbogbloshie

Posted on by pervasiveyaz

Agbogbloshie is a challenging site. As a space, Agbogbloshie is sensory overload: soil and water darkened from pollution exude noxious vapours under the heat of the sun; toxic fumes emanate from burning sites; the clamour of slamming hammers and banging chisels fills the air… But that is only part of the Agbogbloshie story.

A closer look at the ecosystem of the giant self-organized open-air factory shows that Agbogbloshie is about more than destruction alone. A parallel set of activities support the livelihood of onsite workers: food and entertainment spaces — Agbogbloshie has both a cinema and foosball tables! Numerous mosques dot the landscape (we found a total of 14 mosques in the area surveyed) serving five times a day the faithful that are working nearby. Since believers must take ablution before praying, water circulates in plastic tea pots from water tanks, the few municipal water supplies and public toilets/showers that are sprinkled around the site. Workers also engage in making: making tools (such as chisels) to disassemble e-waste or other items into scrap that has a resalable value, making machines (such as a furnace blowing system using a bicycle wheel) to make these tools, and making items (aluminum pots and coal pots using metals harvested from refrigerators) to sell outside the boundaries of the site.

Agbo-maker-chisel
Furnace blower at a blacksmith workshop making chisels for e-waste disassembly

We love the hand-crafted bicycle tyre-powered blowers used to ventilate locally-fabricated furnaces for cottage industry smelters (seen in various places). They are a powerful example of the on-going knowledge transfer within Agbogbloshie and testament to the intertwined nature of making and technology development. Exactly what AMP seeks to further leverage in Agbogbloshie.

Here is the link to our Flickr album Made in Agbogbloshie. While (e-)waste processing is crude and hasty to maximize profit (informal e-waste workers earn a higher than average income compared to informal workers overall), we certainly see all the parts necessary to make the machine, the self-organized open-air factory, run smoothly. Making is just part of it.

AMP Spacecraft

Posted on by Emmanuel K. Ofori-Sarpong

For many designers across the globe, language (words) form the bedrock of design thinking: “Words are tools for architectural design; for the development of design intent or strategy, as well as construct the ideas that drive its creation” (Eckler, 2012) [1].

The Agbogbloshie makerspace, is essentially, a community “toolbox” for Agbogbloshie. It was conceived as a spacecraft. This choice of a word served both as a starting point and driver for the design. With AMP co-pi DK Osseo-Asare as the lead on the design team, the AMP spacecraft was designed with mobility in mind, as are other crafts like an air craft, or even space faring vehicles (spacecrafts). As a community kiosk with hand tools, the idea of crafting (making with ones hands) was pivotal in addition to the fact that, these tools enable the spacecraft to replicate itself. Hence it can be read as a place where space is crafted.

Beyond these, the influence of space travel is relevant to the Agbogbloshie makerspace. Here, the toxic electronic landscape which is unfavourable for human habitation is likened to an extra-terrestrial planetary body. Hence, the arrival of a spacecraft could imply the commencement of a process of terraforming–the hypothetical notion that, in order to be habitable and/or conducive for human habitation, atmospheres and ecology of other planets can be modified. From this point of view, the arrival of the AMP spacecraft in Agbogbloshie is the commencement of a process of spatial change or transformation, a notion which is itself deeply related to crafts (vehicles).

In summary, the spacecraft is:

  • Mobile and is like other crafts
  • A place for making (crafting)
  • A workshop for crafting space due to its self replicating ability
  • And a first step towards the spatial transformation of the Agbogbloshie landscape

In terms of the structure, the AMP spacecraft is modular and has a frame consisting of 12 octet trusses per module. (See video here). Each octet truss is made up of steel angle bars, flat plates and rods, which form a series of half octahedra all welded together into a singular structural unit. The intention is to fill in the structural frame with materials sourced from within the Agbogbloshie landscape such as old refrigerator doors, which will constitute composite “precast” insulated panels.

photo(2)
Spacecraft brainstorming session at Hub Accra during AMPQAMP

For the past three weeks week as part of AMPQAMP, the process of crafting the first module of the spacecraft continued starting in Hub Accra with theorizing and brainstorming about the spacecrafts systems and components, and ending in Kokrobite with the fabriacation of the first full scale octet truss, after several prototypes and mockups. It was a long tedious and yet highly exciting process where our desire for high level of precision and accuracy meant cutting and re-cutting, measuring and re-measuring, until we arrived at fairly satisfactory results.

welding image
Welding of octet truss at Kokrobite Institute.

Thanks to master welder Badu and his assistant, we had a fruitful learning experience. Their process was particularly interesting to us because, they used a grinder that was itself “e-waste” sourced from Agbogbloshie. As a space of convergence, the spacecraft which is a place for interaction and sharing (and will exist both as a tangible place, and a fully functional virtual platform) will soon land in Agbogbloshie. Stay tuned!!!

DSC_0080 - Copy
Octet truss welded during AMPQAMP

1. Eckler, F.J 2012, “Language of Space and Form: Generative Terms for Architecture”, John Wiley and Sons, New Jersey, page 1.

***

See also:

WEEE basic understanding AMP Manuals

Posted on by Emmanuel K. Ofori-Sarpong

One of AMP’s core objectives is the compilation and design of a “waste” electronic and electrical equipment (WEEE) manual. The main purpose of this is the provision of vital information for the AMP maker collective comprising of STEAM students/graduates (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics) and Agbogbloshie e-waste workers.

For several months, we worked on the print version of the manual–a series of individual manuals for each electrical and electrical equipment studied–which has undergone several design iterations (see image below). We collected data from a number of articles and our own fieldwork (to learn the value in Ghana Cedis of each item brought to and dismantled in Agbogbloshie). We designed a manual for each piece of equipment studied so it fits a single folded sheet of paper. This makes it simpler and more user friendly. In the coming days, these manuals as they are so far, will be hosted online so makers and people knowledgeable about electrical and electronic equipment could contribute to them.

The manual is organized so as to give information on material composition, parts and components, hazardous materials, urban mining opportunities, tools for dis-assembly, steps for dis-assembly, safety gear, and opportunities and ideas for remaking.

Svet Lightyear visitPicture of the AMP Team showing the manual to Svet from the Lightyear Foundation.

This task is a staggering one because it should cater to the needs of people pertaining to different social categories, each with different understanding and knowledge. On the one hand are the STEAM professionals, educated and used to reading guides and who may even love manuals and on the other hand, the e-waste workers, predominantly uneducated and having a general disinclination towards anything remotely related to guidebooks or for that matter, books. This means they would both relate differently to a typical guidebook. Although this may sound stereotypical, it is a truth with which the AMP team is confronted.

powershift Students at the recently ended PowerShift conference viewing the latest version of the manuals
Students at the recently ended PowerShift conference viewing the latest version of the manuals

To navigate these murky waters, the team decided to go beyond the traditional printed manual in a foreign language and to in addition to this make to video manuals which can be housed on servers and broadcast inside the spacecraft. These will be targeted specifically at the e-waste workers, and put together by some of them, in collaboration with their STEAM counterparts and will be done in Dagbani ( the Lingua franca as it were in Agbogbloshie). In addition to this, makers and/or hackers around the country and the world will have access in open source fashion to all the manuals online, as part of the AMP digital platform.

Image showing the various iterations of the AMP manual and some sources of inspiration
Image showing the various iterations of the AMP manual and some sources of inspiration

In the coming years, AMP hopes to see this manual evolve into a highly informative periodical, providing vital knowledge for a local and international network of young passionate makers and hackers. A thrilling thought indeed!!!

Manual-fridge sample_Page_2Manual-fridge sample_Page_1

A Spacesuit for the Spacecraft

Posted on by pervasiveyaz

All members of the Woelab (Togo first makerspace) who came to visit us in Kokrobitey were proudly wearing their African print Woelab shirt… It’s because “we are a community!” they proudly said. This is when I realized that the spacesuit that we were designing was more than a utility shirt to carry things around, gas mask, electronic add-ons (such as the speakers that Daniel from the KNUST Creativity Group salvaged from a dead laptop) or tools to disassemble e-waste. Seeing the youth happily wearing early prototypes (version designed by Dk Osseo-Asare for his Low Design Office crew of builders) confirmed the fact that the spacesuit was a tool to bring together people of the AMP maker community.

Spacesuit 1 Emmanuel wearing the first prototype

Kuukuwa and I tweaked the original design, thinking about how to optimize its production process and improve usability. For example we used 1 inch straps in lieu of the hand-made ribbons structure running across. This allowed for the sewing to be faster and more precise. We opened the sides of the utility shirt to ease movement—it now unfolds “like an apron” and eventually could be hanged in the spacecraft and used as soft storage. We also reallocated some of the pockets and minimized cuts in the pattern. Inspired by the way kimonos are cut, we used a folded rectangular piece of fabric to create a back pocket that would nicely fold around the side and close the utility shirt, hence minimizing the number of cuts. We added to a hood to the original design, prospecting for a way to integrate a gas mask eventually developed by the AMP Poly-Science team—the Poly-Science team who also experimented with weather proofing fabric using plastic, which can become handy for the utility wear.

With Emmanuel (AMP maker and model =) and Martine (Woelab), we produced a first prototype using African fabric. While I was getting my head around designing the hood, Kuukuwa drew the overall pattern to pass on to Master Chamil who is the production manager of the Kokrobitey Institute. Million thanks to him and his magic abilities, the second prototype he produced helped further develop the design. A third (final?) prototype is now in the making. We found that collaborating with skilled and open-minded people as Chamil, master maker at heart, was extremely important to advance our own skills as “fashion designer apprentice”. Making is about trans-disciplinary and peer-to-peer learning. It particularly expands your ability as a designer.

Spacesuit 2 Chamil working on the second prototype

There is much more to do for the space suit—a number of electronic add-ons made of e-waste, speakers, solar charging station for mobile phones and finally detailing the cost of the suit, yards of fabric (could this eventually be recycled advertizing material?) needed to finally go into production of a number of them.

spacesuit Martine, Yasmine and Kuukuwa working on the Spacesuit