Africa

Laying claim to “what will be the world’s largest solar power plant” is difficult these days with so many in development, but the Texas-based Fluor corporation is drawing up plans for a five gigawatt (GW) plant in South Africa that would certainly make it amongst the world’s largest. The company has been selected to perform a feasibility study for the potential solar park to be built on the edge of the Kalahari Desert in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa – an area the South African government says is among the sunniest three percent of regions in the world. Read More

According to a recent study, over 60 percent of people in developing countries live more than eight kilometers (five miles) from a healthcare facility. As you can imagine, most of these people don’t own cars, or even have access to motorized ambulance services. When they require urgent medical attention, they often have to walk, are loaded into an ox cart or wheelbarrow, or have to sit on the rack of a bicycle. Fortunately, however, an alternative is available to some – the Zambulance. While the bicycle trailer/ambulance might seem like very basic medical transportation, early trials indicate that it’s truly life-saving. Read More

The World Health Organization estimates that 1.3 million people worldwide died from tuberculosis in 2008. It’s definitely a disease to be taken seriously, so when people in remote locations are being tested for it, it’s best if they don’t have to wait for their samples to be processed at a distant lab. That’s why medical device designer Andrew Miller, when he was still an undergraduate at Houston’s Rice University, developed the portable, battery-operated Global Focus fluorescence microscope. In a paper published this Wednesday, Miller and his co-authors described how the $US240 Global Focus is able to detect TB-positive sputum smears just as well as laboratory microscopes worth over $40,000. Read More

There's no doubt in our mind that Spencer Conway's solo circumnavigation of Africa by motorbike will offer more than enough dramatic material for a hollywood film, if not at least a television reprise of Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman's Long Way Down. At time of writing, Spencer has been on the road for 134 days, 23 hours, 58 minutes and counting, since leaving Biddenden, Kent on November 1st 2009. His route will take him clockwise around the outer countries of Africa and will cover 60,000km in total. The project, sponsored by Swaziland-born Richard E. Grant aims to raise UK£28,000 (US$42,000) for charity organization Save the Children, and so far he has traveled across 28 countries, through 30 borders, and biked 27,000km. Read More

We’ve seen bikes with frames made out of aluminum, titanium, carbon fiber, and even IsoTruss tubes, but bamboo? Well yes, actually, we saw some here in Gizmag just last May. Back then, we were looking at some fairly basic city bikes built by Brazilian designer Flavio Deslandes. This time around the bamboo bikes are decidedly higher-end creations, built by Californian designer Craig Calfee, of Calfee Design. Although these bikes are definitely high-end, he’s also working on using bamboo to provide employment and cheap transportation for the people of Ghana. Read More

What kid doesn’t like kicking around a soccer ball? Imagine if this fun activity could also provide enough energy to power something useful in a modest off-grid African village, like a reliable light to cook by or an emergency mobile phone. The sOccket is a prototype soccer ball that captures kinetic energy when it is kicked or thrown, stores it in an internal battery and makes that energy available for a myriad of small but useful purposes. In other words, it’s a fun, portable energy-harvesting power source that is designed to take a kicking. Read More

While clean, safe water is in short supply in much of Africa, there's no shortage of sun. The Solaqua is a nifty portable device that uses the sun's rays to purify contaminated water. Through innovative use of readily available materials, it carries, disinfects and stores water, providing a safe, environmentally sustainable source of water for rural communities. Read More

Solar powered devices aren’t new, but English student Emily Cummins has developed a way of using the sun’s power to help impoverished communities in Africa. Her eco-friendly, sustainable fridge is based on a simple principle: it uses the sun’s rays to evaporate water, which in turn keeps the contents cool. Read More