AfriGadget: African tinkerers make strange but effective use of technology

[Hedgehogey]

This blog is dedicated to the inventions amatuer tinkerers in africa make.

http://www.afrigadget.com/2006/12/18/homemade-windmill-in-malawi/
Malawian man powers his house with a windmill.

http://www.afrigadget.com/2007/02/19/rural-bio-gas-generator-in-kenya/
cow poop gas generator

http://www.afrigadget.com/2007/06/25/williams-windmill/
another windmill

http://www.afrigadget.com/2007/07/
A third windmill powers a cel phone tower

http://www.afrigadget.com/2007/08/
steam heats sausages

http://www.afrigadget.com/2007/10/15/where-the-world-sees-junk-africa-recycles/
sheet metal animals

http://www.afrigadget.com/2007/11/08/africas-modular-machines/
modular machines make for unintentional dieselpunk

[Otto Von Pifka]

excellent! tinkering is alive and well in africa, it would seem.

glad to see someone actually found a use for those little obnoxious generators that rub against the tires!

[Johnny Payphone]

As a member of the pith-helmet set, with strong ties to Africa and a home there not to mention generations of tropical tinkerers in my bloodline, I consider this sort of stuff to be extremely steampunk.  In the Victorian era it was being on the edge of the Empire that caused it; this time around it will be the end of civilization that does it.

[theMadTinker]

In some ways the third world is ahead of us, using what's at hand, and doing it themselves rather than buying specialized contraptions off the shelf.  It would be nice to see more people do that around here, but people who were born into the kind of privilege that we have in the first world generally don't like doing things for themselves when they can spend money instead.

[aquafortis]

Ho, my dear fellow, ho ho. I scoff gently at your finds with this fine link:

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hV0rzEDq7TWnlm7tMmr2zeQmiRig

A hand-made helicopter, made and operated by a fellow who looked up "principles of flight" on teh interweb and never had the sense to realise that you could never just go out to your garage and apply these principles  to a pile of scrap and after a lot of hammering, fly around in it and proclaim yourself to be king of the skies. 

three cheers for being too dumb to not bother

[Rosel]

Well he is a physics student, so I imagine he is actually pretty bright.
I totally want a little helicopter like that .

Well when we run out of oil & gas we're going to be panicking and running to these people to dig us out of our hole.

[Atterton]

Seeing as he already had a car engine, I wonder why he felt a helicopter would be easier than a car. Great job anyway.

[Johnny Payphone]

three cheers for being too dumb to not bother

Seeing as he built a helicopter, and you're goofing around on the Internet, I don't think you're qualified to judge his intelligence.

[Hedgehogey]

In some ways the third world is ahead of us, using what's at hand, and doing it themselves rather than buying specialized contraptions off the shelf.  It would be nice to see more people do that around here, but people who were born into the kind of privilege that we have in the first world generally don't like doing things for themselves when they can spend money instead.

I've always wondered what the third world thinks of our "post/apocalypse films". After all, they've been living in the post apocalypse for a long time. It must seem so incredibly mundane to them.