Hardware Things: The July Edition
Hello there,
Happy July! Or Monday, as the case may be.
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Things I Enjoyed Reading
A lot of work is going into disease control on the continent, and there are some signs that there is a lot of hope but a lot of funding is still required. Malaria is finally eliminated in Algeria while in Uganda a paper-strip test is proving to be a great diagnostic for Ebola.
While it might sound counterintuitive, the price of many commodities is not set by their producers, an issue I've written about before with regards to tea in Uganda. But last month, cocoa producers in Ivory Coast and Ghana agreed to set a minimum price to their crops - a big deal that could improve the economic outcomes of the growers.
Alev Coban, who's done a lot of work researching makerspaces particularly in Kenya, writes on fear (of failure, of IP theft among others) and how it can impede product development for new hardware entrepreneurs.
A new study shows that the big pharmaceutical companies are responsible for more green house gases than the entire automotive industry. While that's shocking, there's little capacity for change; chemical reactions for medicines typically have low yields and medications have to be refrigerated at the manufacturing site, during transportation, and even at the pharmacy. Complement that with this scary story about how training a single AI model can emit as much carbon as five cars in their lifetime.
Interesting Things
Flexible, airless tyres, from Michelin and GM.
An experimental GPU ray tracer (renderer) for web.
The first digital circuit breaker.
Another liquid metal, but it can stretch.
Things to Apply For
The FbStart Accelerator, by Facebook and CcHUB is open again to entrepreneurs in Nigeria and Ghana working on solutions to local problems using AI, IoT, Data Science, VR, or AR.
Econet and Generation Africa are looking for agri-food entrepreneurs with ideas to be a part of their GoGettaz competition.
Company Spotlight
SUNBOX, developed in Ibadan, uses a battery-as-a-service model to deliver its solar charging stations in rural parts of Nigeria. Each station, operated in franchise, is equipped with internet services and franchisees - present in the community - loan the batteries to users and collect payments via airtime.
🔒 Read more about SUNBOX and their technology.
Shiny Things*
Pictures are powerful, but nothing reads like Todd McLellan's Things Come Apart - a photobook of machine and component teardowns. In the new edition, Joseph Chiodo writes about Active Disassembly, a new method of using smart materials in assembly that can be acted on by heat to disassemble the product quicker. [How the technology works.]
Tweet of the Month
Something to note about how natural resources can affect conflict, there's a lot of good reading on this.
https://twitter.com/LopesInsights/status/1137463637365403650
Other Things
BusinessDay gave me the opportunity to write an opinion column about hardware in Nigeria and what went down at the Datasheet conference back in April. Have a read.
Big thanks to those who replied to my call last month!
Sizobonana maduze,
Chuma.
*new section, will appear intermittently