Partnership with Impact Hub Accra

Posted on by qwequeb

After a year of running #lowdesign #lowhightech #lofab *style prototyping workshops out of the Impact Hub Accra, and building on a year plus of geeking out at the former Hub Accra, AMP can now share a cool new partnership starting this month to build a demo makerspace with Impact Hub Accra and Siemens Stiftung. (*Grassroots maker tech trend, e.g. Afri_Design_X: Ashesi Sessions)

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Building an innovation engine

Hundreds of thousands of young people enter Ghana’s job market each year—ill-prepared to create their own—while hundreds of thousands of artisans and crafts(wo)men—from welders to carvers, carpenters, masons, electricians and electronics repairers, tailors, seamstresses, weavers, cobblers and sign painters to tinsmiths,copper-smiths , blacksmiths and ironmongers—are already active country-wide. If we can leverage this massive belt of grassroots (micro-)manufacturing know-how, how might we retool the emerging conversation around African ‘makers’ to better design products and environments together?

Most people who want to make things, don’t know how; others don’t know how to scale what they make. The challenge is finding what you need—knowledge, expertise, blueprints, materials, tools—to make what you want, the best way you can.

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Our story starts at Agbogbloshie—an informal sector scrapyard, market, slum and park in Accra, Ghana (actually located in the Old Fadama neighborhood) that is mischaracterized by media globally as the “world’s largest e-waste dump” (compare to Adam Minter’s saner piece on Smithsonian.com). In response, 1500+ youth from Ghana, Africa, Europe and the US—750+ scrap dealers and 750+ students and recent graduates across a spectrum of STEAM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics)—have participated since 2014 to co-design the Agbogbloshie Makerspace Platform (AMP): a participatory design project in interclass innovation—bringing youth from different backgrounds, cultures and countries to network Agbogbloshie’s nodes and modes of making with new tools and technologies of digital design and fabrication.

We developed a first prototype of a mobile plug-in makerspace (we call it a spacecraft) and mobile app: a trading platform for makers—to share what you need, what you have and what you make—that powers a community of plug-in spacecraft. Today we are gearing up to launch spacecraft at Agbogbloshie and at Impact Hub Accra, together with the digital network (AMP app) that links recycling with digital fabrication and distributed manufacturing. In tandem, this hybrid digital-physical platform approach operates to amplify makers’ potential—to make more, better—by making together.

What is a Makerspace?
A makerspace is a 21st-century digitally-connected community workshop and lab open to entrepreneurs and anyone interested in learning, designing and making together in a collaborative environment. Typical equipment ranges from low- to high-tech, but spans 3D printers, laser cutters, CNC machines (e.g. routers, mills, lathes), sewing machines, soldering irons and electronics tool kits. Makerspaces help people gain new skills through learning-by-doing: using CAD/CAM software to apply 3D modeling, 3D printing, coding, robotics, carpentry, metalwork and other tools for rapid prototyping of physical objects and hardware. Makerspace complements Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math (STEAM) fields to drive innovation and support entrepreneurship through new product development.

Makerspace@Impact Hub Accra

Today we are excited to announce the next phase of partnership between AMP and the Impact Hub Accra, Ghana’s pioneering co-working space and incubator for active early stage entrepreneurs: we are installing a pilot makerspace for digital design and fabrication at the Impact Hub Accra.

Initiated in 2005 with a single location, Impact Hub is the world’s leading network of entrepreneurial communities and collaborative spaces committed to generating positive impact. From Amsterdam to Accra, Singapore to São Paulo, Impact Hub supports the work of more than 12,000 members each year. The global Impact Hub community founds over 1,250 startups annually, creates more than 4,600 new full-time jobs, and serves over 2.2 million customers and beneficiaries in more than 50 countries around the world.

Impact Hub Accra, part of the first cohort of eight Impact Hubs in Africa, has a growing membership of over 100 and a broader community of nearly 7,000. Since 2015 Impact Hub Accra has hosted Africa’s biggest hackathon, “Hack for Big Choices” (supported by Facebook and WordPress), startup pitch events (most recently with The Case Foundation, for a $25,000 prize), an accelerator for top social entrepreneurs in Ghana (taking the Unreasonable Institute’s “Unreasonable Labs” global), and developed Ghana’s first digital design and innovation lab (in partnership with the US government’s Broadcasting Board of Governors).

Building a makerspace at Impact Hub Accra will integrate existing maker and entrepreneur communities to create products that solve local problems, engage real markets and have potential to scale their impact on people’s lives. Here is what we are adding to make that happen:

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Equipment & Space

  • Space: Renovate existing community workshop at the Impact Hub Accra, where we have run a dozen maker events with 200+ participants over the past year.

  • Toolboxes: Install a set of maker-themed toolboxes that can be stowed, checked-out and used anywhere at Impact Hub Accra.

  • Equipment: Provide a range of tools for digital design and fabrication, including shop tools, sewing machine, 3D printers, laser cutter, CNC mill/router and electronics workbench.
Programing & Activities

  • Access: Equipment/space rental for rapid prototyping available to makers and members of Impact Hub Accra (fee-based).

  • Community: Informal maker meet-ups organized around themed projects (free and open to the public).

  • Training: Scheduled sessions to help makers gain and improve their skills in digital design and fabrication (paid).

  • Competitions: Periodic design challenges to help teams move from ideas to concepts to prototypes for testing in the market.

  • Incubation: In-house support for select new product development ventures, including space, access to tools and mentoring in design, prototyping and entrepreneurship.

  • Design-build: Digital design and fabrication as a service, to be offered to startups and existing businesses (future).

Scaling the impact

Over the past year, AMP and the Impact Hub Accra have in partnership run dozens of maker events on-site with 200+ participants, including: a hybrid participatory design plus lean startup-style “Makers and Development” approach to the AMP mobile app for Android; concept prototyping workshop with winners of Innovate Ghana’s Design Challenge on themes of waste and sanitation; and an interdisciplinary collaboration between students via Ashesi University’s Design Lab, design entrepreneurs in the Impact Hub Accra community, informal sector scrap dealers from Agbogbloshie, engineering students from the University of Ghana-Legon, students from l’École Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris and Princeton University’s PACE Center for Civic Engagement.

Now, starting in October 2016, we are launching the pilot Makerspace @Impact Hub Accra over a period of ten (10) months, with both the goal of upgrading our facilities and target of training 100 new makers, supporting development of 10 new product concepts to prototype stage, and incubating 2-4 ventures for a six-month period post. Our target budget for this pilot project is 120,000 USD for the makerspace equipment and build-out, running costs and a series of maker workshops, training sessions, Design Challenge and follow-up incubation.

Deeply grateful to Siemens Stiftung for offering support and collaboration toward not only the project budget to launch Makerspace @Impact Hub Accra, but also feasibility studies and seed funding for three (3) other Impact Hubs in Africa to roll-out makerspaces in their own local innovation ecosystems and grow the network.

We are scaling fast and always looking for partners, mentors, supporters, leads on sourcing used equipment and donors to help with match funding.

Click the link below to help share this story with your friends via our Thunderclap* campaign. More vim!

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*This is NOT a commitment to donate money, and Thunderclap will NOT “spam” your friends on Facebook/Twitter. Thunderclap is a cool online tool that lets a group of people all share a one-time message with their friends on social media, on a particular date. The goal is to alert as many people as possible to your message—all at once.

Clicking on the “SUPPORT” button just means that you will help share us this story on 26 September, 2016. It’s like a RT on Twitter or a “share” on Facebook…in advance. Can you spare 30 seconds to help change the lives of Ghana makers?

Prophecyting

Posted on by dkoa

Today Agbogbloshie scrap dealers, together with Ashesi University students from Kobby Ankomah-Graham‘s seminar, helped Belgian-Beninese artist Fabrice Monteiro and Senegalese designer Doulsy scout locations for their Prophecy II photo series. The Prophecy I series probed the issue of environmental pollution by evoking spirits of the earth, dispatched to either plead or warn humans to change our ways lest we kill our mother planet. Per panel discussion with Fabrice at Ashesi, the Prophecy II series will be a diptych contrasting the needless excess of planned obsolescence against the devastating human and environmental destruction used to extract the resources from which our electronic devices are produced out of the earth.

It was noticeable and community members confirmed that you now see only smaller stockpiles of circuit boards and plastic monitor cases, for example, because buyers are more consistent and frequent. What AMP affirms about Fabrice’s project is that it is creating a space—mythical but real at the same time—reminding us all to take action now, before its too late to save this planet.

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Fabrice testing frames and Doulsy smiling upon a scrap dealer’s reveal of treasure trove of VHS cassette tapes (part of the costume design):

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Ashesi University MasterCard Foundation Scholars visit Agbogbloshie

Posted on by dkoa

 

The Sounds of Agbogbloshie

Posted on by pervasiveyaz

We have a huge blog posts backlog, but here is at least one regarding sound recording conducted in Agbogbloshie on the 22/7/2014 (a while back!), the day Ellen Foster, PhD candidate at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY visited AMP (Thank you for recording a major part of it). So much has been said about Agbogbloshie but not often the right story! Agbogbloshie is a busy recycling/making center and you can hear the rhythm of the hammers, dismantling or making…

‘Sounds of Agbogbloshie‘ playlist on Soundcloud:

 

 

Listening to Agbogbloshie

Posted on by ivyasuo
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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.

Archibots: Re-making Agbogbloshie (intro session)

Posted on by ivyasuo

The first session of the Archibots workshop came off as scheduled on the May 30th 2014. The event was well attended by people from various disciplinary backgrounds. There were engineers, architects, CAD technicians, business men & women and lecturers as well as from various nationalities, such as Spain and the Netherlands. This was the introductory session for Archibots, a design workshop to prototype architecture robots for Agbogbloshie.  As part of the event, all three collaborating organizations (tap, AMP and MESH) made presentations on what they do. AMP co-lead DK Osseo-Asare, introduced participants to Agbogbloshie E-waste circuitry, which is the context for the architecture robots to be designed and the key design concepts as far as AMP is concerned. Some of the videos that were selected to provide inspiration for participants can be found here . The team is eagerly awaiting the next phase which is the design session scheduled for June 7th 2014 at Hub Accra. This promises to be just as exciting as the May 30th event. Thanks to our friend and ally, media partners MESH Ghana for compiling footage of the event, which can be found at Archibots: Remaking Agbogbloshie.

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Momo Paris: the multiple facets of mobile usage in Africa

Posted on by pervasiveyaz

On May 19, 2014, Yasmine Abbas (AMP co-founder) gave a 10 minutes presentation on AMP and AMP’s mobile phone application for makers in Africa at the Mobile Monday (MoMo) event held at the NUMA. Currently the team uses mobile phone to map fieldwork in Agbogbloshie. The AMP digital platform, yet to be developed, is thought to become a mobile learning and banking tool. Via the AMP digital platform, makers will be able to get information on e-waste, to share how to manuals and information on makers’ production–MADE IN AGBOGBLOSHIE–, to get training on (dis)assembly–we are very much inspired by the videos of the Khan Academy (ours will be filmed in the spacecraf)t. The digital platform is envisaged to become a commercial platform to sell makers’ production and make micro-finance transactions. We are working on the project–so don’t get caught by the use of a smart phone (which are increasingly available in Africa) to visualize the concept!

AMP MoMo Image produced by intern Yasmine Sarehane

During that event, UNICEF representatives mentioned the Rio Youth Mapping project developed in collaboration with the MIT Mobile Experience Lab.

This project explores tools to help youth in Rio de Janeiro build impactful, communicative digital maps using mobile and web technologies. A phone application allows youth to produce a realtime portrait of their community through geo-located photos and videos, organized in thematic maps.

This project is evidently of great inspiration to us as we are developing maps to visualize fieldwork conducted in Agbogbloshie.

Archibots: Re-making Agbogbloshie

Posted on by Emmanuel K. Ofori-Sarpong

Re-making Agbogbloshie is a tap:Build design workshop conducted as part of the Agbogbloshie Makerspace Platform QAMP series of maker workshops. MESH Ghana is the media partner.

AMP approach contends that (domains of) architecture and electronics have converged. At such a moment — if we can make open, democratic and collective the capability of manipulating materials from the level of chemistry up, by means of digital technology, we can move beyond the notion of “e-waste”. Electrical and electronic equipment (EEE or 3E), old or new, constitute a vital stream of raw material for the global production chain. In particular, while there is fundamental overlap with the elemental “stuff” of digital space, it is equally important to note that the majority of EEE materials* are generally recyclable such as plastics, steel, aluminium, copper, or other specialized or high-value materials.

Re-making Agbogbloshie is a collaboration between Agbogbloshie Makerspace Platform (AMP) and The Architects’ Project (tap:). The workshop seeks to design and prototype practicable architectural interventions — at the level of equipment — that can inform the discourse of industrial landscapes like Agbogbloshie scaled through kiosk-size 3E materials processing machines, i.e. micro-industrial digital fabrication bots.

Re-making Agbogbloshie design workshop is an exploration of small-scale architectural interventions that operate more than as kinetic micro- shelters — they additionally include “robotic” or electronic systems and tool/equipment functions. The workshop seeks to design “architecture robots” that could assist humans in processing 3E materials, phytoremediation of the contaminated landscape and actively supporting the Agbogbloshie lifecycle.

Agbobloshie: Every year, tons of electronic waste arrives on the shores of Ghana. A huge proportion of this deluge of e-waste flows through Agbogbloshie, where a vibrant community of e-waste workers and makers reuse, recycle and upcycle end-of-life electrical and electronic equipment. However, some of the crude methods used for dismantling e-waste and processing scrap (such as burning wires and cords to recover the copper) are highly polluting: they negatively impact the health of e-waste workers and have led to Agbogbloshie’s notorious position as “the most polluted place on Earth” for 2013, according to Green Cross Switzerland and the nonprofit Blacksmith Institute (USA).

E-waste: E-waste or Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) is typically portrayed as highly toxic old computers, televisions, etc. that are “dumped” in poor countries by rich countries, in violation of the Basel Convention (an international treaty which expressly prohibits such forms of international transhipment of WEEE). While it is true that e-waste contains hazardous materials, and that improper handling and disposal of these materials can greatly pollute the environment and compromise public health, it does not negate the fact that the materials embedded within e-waste are incredibly valuable. In fact, e-waste — considered pound-for-pound as a “raw material” of the global production chain — is among the most valuable on the planet: one ton of old mobile phones has 100X the concentration of precious metals like gold and silver than does an equivalent amount of ore mined from the earth.

Architecture: Usually when most people think about (the practice of) “architecture”, they think about high-end residences or large-scale projects. In Africa, these are typically the only kind of construction projects (along with smaller interventions by the government and NGOs) that have large enough budgets to pay the professional service fees of architects. This leaves the majority of workers and construction works on the continent, which occur in what social scientists call the “informal sector”, outside the design domain of architects, or the scope of formal architecture. The point of departure for this workshop is to propose that this default strategy for Africa’s built environment misses the point. If to date architecture has had limited success in re-configuring the African terrain, perhaps it is time to invert the approach: try to introduce innovation at the bottom, and let it spread.

* EEE- or 3E-materials: Consider electrical and electronic equipment, at all condition levels, as a raw material for global production chain. 3-E materials are a broader and more inclusive range of materials compared to e-materials, e.g. electronics materials based on silicon or other semiconducting materials, and such materials in aggregate, i.e. a circuit board.

Video highlights:

Mapping Agbogbloshie

Posted on by Emmanuel K. Ofori-Sarpong

The past few weeks have been full of amazing new discoveries as the Agbogbloshie Makerspace Platform (AMP) team continues to learn from and with the e-waste recycling and scrap dealers community, on site. Check out our Flickr map which will serve as a tool for documenting and better understanding this ecosystem within Accra’s urban ecology.

Looking for a good option for sorting and sharing image pool on maps with better zoom and options for aerial imagery overlay, either on OpenStreetMap or another platform. Please let us know if you have any thoughts/advice

 

FLICKR map

Map of Agbogbloshie

Posted on by pervasiveyaz

“Map showing the study area.” in Martin Oteng-Ababio, Electronic Waste Management Ghana – Issues and Practices (.pdf)
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A conundrum is created as to whether e-waste recycling is an “economic boom or an
environmental doom”. The nexus becomes more complex particularly at Agbogbloshie, the hub of e-waste activities in Ghana, where there is nothing like “waste”; where every object, component, and material has “value”. On the daily basis, computers and televisions are regularly bought and sold, assembled, disassembled, and reassembled. They disintegrate into their constituent materials-plastics, glass,
and metals. Plastic printer cases are smashed with rudimentary tools including hammer, spanner, chisel and even the bare hands.

(p. 153)