Design that Matters, a Massachusetts non-profit corporation, is dedicated to improving the quality of life in underserved communities. We do this by fostering the development of products and services that meet immediate community needs in areas such as clean water, health care, renewable energy and education. We also do this by developing curriculum materials that engage university engineering, science, policy and business in the design process, thereby strengthening their commitment to serve these communities throughout their careers. Since its launch at MIT in 2000, DtM has worked with over 300 engineering and business students to develop dozens of prototypes that promise to improve thousands of lives.

To learn more about our work in communities and universities around the world, see the DtM homepage.

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These are curriculum materials that we provide to faculty in industrialized and developing countries to use in their courses and research. We solicit our network of collaborators for well-defined problems in areas such areas as clean water, health care and renewable energy. We package these problems into design challenge portfolios.

To learn more, see the DtM design challenge portfolio library.

Amy Smith's Screenless Hammermill

Here is an overview of Amy Smith's screenless hammermill design. Amy has built and field-tested this device in Senegal. We're bringing data and technical specs for our NGO collaborators in Mali and Benin.

Here is a conventional hammermill, which features a metal mesh or screen to separate the flour from the rubbish [Photo courtesy Amy Smith].

Here is a picture of Amy's screenless hammermill prototype, which she built in Senegal.

A new type of hammermill was designed to operate without a screen. To further reduce milling fees, the mill was designed to minimize the manufacturing and operating costs. [...]

Further improvements to the mill include a single hammer blade which is directly mounted to the motor shaft and a grits discharge which allows continuous operation of the mill. These improvements allow the mill to be produced at about a quarter of the cost of conventional hammermills. In addition, the energy consumption to operate the mill is decreased by about seventy percent and a superior product is produced." -- Amy Smith

UNDP Multifunctional Platform

Here are some brief notes and lots of pictures from our site visit in N'Tjila, where we visited a multifunctional platform installation that has been upgraded through a collaboration between the Mali Folkecenter and the Ministry of Energy and CNESOLER (National Centre for Renewable Energy). This particular platform features a diesel engine modified by the MFC to run on jatropha oil, a heavy vegetable oil made from a locally-available plant. Through a network of heavy leather belts, the engine shaft drives a jatropha oil press, as well as a battery charger and a shea-nut press.

Like most NGO projects, the site was indicated by a sign on the main road--although Tom Burrell at MFC later pointed out that this sign actually refers to a different mulitfunctional platform site in Bougoulaba (near N'Tjila).

Once off the paved road, things got a little dicey but out driver Mustafa plowed through the deepest puddle without any trouble.

Along the way, Tom Burrell from the MFC showed us a hedge of jatropha maintained by the village, and gave us all kinds of useful stats on the processing of jatropha seeds that I will add later.

Martin also took notes.

At the site, the technician fired up the motor to give us a demonstration of one of the presses. This particular press produced a paste from shea nuts. In fifteen minutes, the machine was able to zip through a quantity of nuts that previously took village women eight hours to pound by hand using a kind of oversized mortar and pestle.

The battery charger had broken two weeks ago. Unfortunately for these kinds of projects, spare parts are hard to come by.

Fortunately, the MFC has trained the operator how to fix these and any other maintenance issues with the engine and cooling system, the jatropha press and the shea nut press. The platform is generating funds by pressing karité (shea nuts), so when he has time, the operator will be able to go to Sikasso or Bougouni to replace the broken battery charger component. It is this kind of training that makes the difference between a sustainable or nonsutainable project. As Andy Smith pointed out, it isn't so much Mean Time Before Failure (MTBF) that is the important statistic in determining the lifespan of development projects--because even the best pieces of eauipment will eventually break down. Rather, it would be more useful to track Mean Time To Repair.

According to Tom at MFC, there is no problem (at least in Sikasso and other towns) with the availability of spare parts for the multifunctional platform setup in N'Tjila, the generator part in question having originally come from an old car or truck. It is easy to find and replace. All other components for the platform are available in Mali, including the jatropha press, which MFC first brought to Mali from Nepal and trained local technicians to build.

And that was the multifunctional platform. As usual, lots of village kids showed up to watch the proceedings.

Boite des Images

One of the most exciting discoveries during our trip has been the "boite des images", a sort of low-tech predecessor to the Kinkajou. We first heard about the teaching tool from a group of school directors in Siby. Souleymane Sarr at Association Jeunesse Action (AJA) in Bamako was able to demonstrate the actual device, as AJA makes them for the Ministry of Education.

Souleymane and his colleagues immediately saw the connection between their programs and the Kinkajou. We'll be meeting them again next week to discuss the details of a manufacturing partnership between DtM and AJA.

This device features a series of paper images mounted on a long plastic "tape". AJA has produced tape reels for such applications as technical safety training for their apprentice metalworkers and Bambara language instruction tapes for elementary schools.

AJA also has a program called "Bibliotheque Ambulante", or "Walking Library", where they deliver books on loan to rural communities.

In Search of Plastic

On the way back from the Mali Folkecenter this afternoon, we took a tour through Bamako's Zone Industriel to get a sense for local manufacturing capacity. We found companies working with injection-molded plastics (in the form of shoes and buckets) and sheet metal (for aluminum roofing sheets). There are countless sidewalk arc-welding shops and a booming trade in "pieces detachees"--recycled spare parts--from cars, radios, VCRs and pretty much everything else you could think of.

The roads in the area were pretty wretched. It was only after we'd plunged through a couple two-foot deep mud puddles that our driver Mustafa admitted that he'd been up until almost midnight the night before washing the car.

SOACAP (Societe Africane de Chaussures et Articles en Plastique)

TIME: 4:15 PM, Jul 25

BACKGROUND: Located in Zone Industrielle in Bamako. They are one of the larger plastic manufacturers in Bamako, and appear to make many of the shoes and buckets which we see around Mali.

NOTES:
Implementation

• Interested in manufacturing the Kinkajou form, etc.


• They have an injection molding machine


• They claim that the mold for the top form (which could make 3 parts at a time) would cost about $80,000


• They do not have a vacuum molding machine


• They get their molds from Taiwan

OUR COMMENTS:

• They seemed like a funny, but strange bunch-all Muslim and joking about marrying Kateri and sending their profits to Osama Bin Laden.

Electric Bamako

This afternoon, we took a tour of the electronics industry in Bamako, looking for components and technicians. This is part of our general search to determine the feasibility of manufacturing devices like the Kinkajou locally. With Mustafa's help, and a reference from Ibrahim Togoloa at the Mali Folkecenter, we hit the jackpot. The electronics market near Dabanani in the Grand Marche had everything we could ever want in terms of components. If they didn't have the original part, given an example they could scavenge pretty much any part we would need from the handy piles of junk circuit boards and other discarded components.

This shop in particular was very well organized, with tiny labelled drawers of components stacked up to the ceiling.

We only had time for a brief survey of local electronics talent. These gentlemen fixed TVs, VCRs and other consumer electronics--parts that if broken in the States would more than likely be thrown away.

According to Ibrahim at the MFC, Malian technicians are incredibly resourcesful when it comes to resurrecting broken components. He's also confident that if we could provide the assembly drawings, we wouldn't have trouble finding people who could put them together locally.

On the Road in West Africa

Taking to the paved roads between cities, the few private cars you'll see are carrying either big-business types, government muckety-mucks or foreign NGO personnel. The average person--that is, the minority group who actually leaves the village--travels around by the various forms of public transportation.

These include, in descending order of ticket cost: the bus (like our beloved Somatra line), the gbaka or sotrama (a 22-person minivan with either vinyl seats or after-market wooden benches)

the bashé (a Peugeot minitruck with a partially-covered back and wooden or metal benches),

the sept-place (a Peugeot station wagon fitted with extra seats in the trunk, that carries between seven and ten),

the taxi-brousse (a Peugeot sedan that seats five and up), the zemidjan (a motorcycle or moped taxi that carries as many as three passengers)

and various forms of wagons and carts (horse, donkey, and oxcarts are all common means of transportation between market towns in rural Mali).

Renewable Energy in Mali

Ibrahim Togola and Tom Burrell from the Mali Folkecenter gave us some useful statistics on energy use in Mali, and the hurdles facing renewable energy projects. For a country whose arable land is seriously threatened by desertification, it was amazing to discover that wood and charcoal sales in Mali represent an annual business of approximately 10 billion CFA (US$14 million).

Although some of the wood and charcoal is imported from neighboring Senegal, Guineau and Côte d'Ivoire, the vast majority is produced locally. On the road south to Bougouni, we passed at least a dozen Peugeot minitrucks groaning under loads of firewood stacked nearly twenty feet high. Even as we headed north to Mopti, deep in the Sahel where trees and even bushes are scarce, most villages we passed through would have at least few cords of wood stacked for sale near the community speed-bump.

In the various quartiers (neighborhoods) of Bamako, it was easy to find wood and charcoal for sale, usually stored in big heaps along side roads.

Out in the villages, we'd see women returning for foraging expeditions with enormous tree-limbs balanced on their heads. In Dogon country, Siby and other rural regions, we were struck by how tidy the orchards and stands of trees seemed to be. No stumps sticking up, no dead branches poking out of tree trunks or laying on the ground. Everything was collected for firewood.

This use of wood has serious consequences for renewable energy projects. First, firewood (or "foraged biomass", to use a more technical term) is considered to be a free resource--you don't have to pay anything to go out and chop it down or otherwise collect it and haul it back to town. Accordingly, people selling firewood in the villages will accept almost any price for the excess wood they sell by the roadside.

Cheap firewood makes competition difficult for renewable sources like solar energy, wind and biofuels like jatropha oil and biomethane. The problem is that firewood prices don't account for externalities, ie those consequences of consuming nonrenewables that don't immediately appear in the bottom line. In this case, externalities include problems like deforestation, soil erosion and desertification.

Mali, of course, isn't alone in failing to include externalities in the total cost of their nonrenewable energy sources. Renewables like solar and wind power have only recently started to make economic sense (in terms of dollars per kilowatt-hour) in markets like the United States.

It's also important to point out that, for reasons of economic constraints, West Africa as a whole is far ahead of many industrialized markets in terms of other renewable indicators. For example, from the air at night almost all of the lights of Bamako have an unexpected blue tint. These are, in fact, thousands of fluorescent lightbulbs--and they stand out because there are so few sodium streetlamps. So far on this trip, we've yet to see a single incandescent bulb. Tube fluorescents are the most common, and 8, 13 and 18 watts are the most common sizes. Although the output spectrum isn't quite the same, an 18-watt fluorescent bulb is roughly the equivalent of a 100-watt incandescent bulb.

Multifunctional Platform in Benin

The UNDP has for some time been running a multifunctional platform project in Mali. This platform is built around a simple diesel engine that is connected by belts to various tools, such as a cereal mill, seed press and battery charger. Unfortunately, many of the platforms we saw in Mali were out of order and had the appearance of being neglected for some time. Here in Benin, we've found locally-made, motor-driven mills chugging away in just about every village. Kemon alone had at least four such mills. I found this large mill at the small marche in Parakou.

In this case, the mill was being used to grind dried corn into flour. This machine took about fifteen minute, and four passes, to completely grind a large bowl of corn.

According to the mill owner, the diesel motor was over 30 years old, and had been in constant operation.

Similar to the UNDP MFP installation, the motor was cooled using a pair of water tanks.

It was hard to get good pictures of the mill, due to the sudden appearance of a mob of extremely excited little kids who all wanted their picture taken. Digital cameras like the one I brought, with a little LCD display on the back, were a big hit with kids and often caused these kinds of mob scenes.

Lighting in Kemon

Kemon, like many rural villages in West Africa, is not connected to the electric grid. Night-time lighting is mostly provided by various classes of kerosene lamps, although about 50% of the population can afford to use battery-powered flashlights for getting around town after dark. One of our goals for the visit with MVV was to introduce them to Light Up the World's solid-state LED lamps. Here (from left to right), we have an electrician from a larger, nearby village, our friend Gabriel Agbede, and MVV's technical expert Salomon Chabi getting a first-hand look at the LUTW lamps.

The LUTW lamps were a big hit. We left two units in the village for testing by the community, and Salomon has one unit at his office in Cotonou for additional testing.

In terms of community lighting, kerosene lanterns are the most common source of night-time illumination. There are a few different categories of kerosene-burning lamps.

• "Lampion" (simple, locally-made wickless kerosene lamp with open, sooty flame) - 100-200 CFA (US$0.20-0.40)


• Wick lantern with glass mantle (everything from inexpensive Chinese brand to pricey French brands) - 6,000-20,000 CFA (US$12-40)

Although fuel prices fluctuate significantly depending on the political situation in neighboring Nigeria, kerosene in Benin currently costs around 300 CFA/liter ($us0.60). In the village, fuel is rarely bought in liter quantities. Families will instead buy small quantities of kerosene in soda bottles for 50-100 CFA. 50 CFA ($US0.10) is enough kerosene for roughly two night's illumination in a lampion or slightly longer in a lantern.

It is also possible to find mantle lanterns that burn camping gas. The camping gas cannisters cost about 700 CFA ($US1.40) in the village, and last about three hours.

Below, Arcadius Chabi from MVV demonstrates a camping gas lantern (L) and a Chinese-made kerosene wick lantern (R).

As Dave Irvine-Halliday at LUTW has pointed out, both open-flame kerosene lamps and wick lamps with glass mantles represent a fire hazard. Thousands of children in Benin are burned every year in lantern accidents.

Battery Charger for Village Flashlights

In Kemon, like many rural communities in developing countries, is not connected to the national power grid. Batteries represent the only source of electricity for most community members. People use disposable AA and C batteries to power their flashlights and radios. Compared to prices in the States, batteries are dirt cheap: 100 CFA (roughly US$0.20) for a AA battery, and 150 CFA (US$0.30) for a C battery. The quality isn't great. Two C batteries in a flashlight will last about two weeks, but this is partly a function of how amazingly dark it gets at night in the village. People can still make use of a pretty dim flashlight.

There are about 2,000 flashlights in operation in Kemon alone. As a result, battery disposal is a major environmental problem. This concrete-lined disposal pit, a project initiated by PCV Elizabeth Eckel and MVV, currently holds 8,000 discarded batteries collected by local schoolkids over one year. The pit has room for another 8,000--or another year's worth of discarded batteries.

Some batteries are taken apart for recycling--the contents used to make paint for school chalkboards. The rest follow the village garbage to one of the designated village dumps.

Even with the dump, you can still find little collections of garbage pretty much everywhere around the village--and these collections often include batteries. Battery chemicals leach into the soil and the ground water. Worse, little kids will pick up discarded batteries to play with, putting them in their mouths or pulling them apart to see what's inside.

MVV has asked DtM to investigate methods for charging rechargable AA and C batteries that work without any connection to the grid. The resulting device can be powered by human effort, solar energy, whatever. Regardless of how it works, it has to be robust and/or cheap. For comparison, in Kemon an imported Chinese flashlight made out of stamped tin with a low-wattage incandescent bulb costs about a dollar. Use that price to scale against commercially available battery chargers in the US.