Making Do Moving Forward
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RURAL HYDROPOWER Statistics don’t paint a pretty picture for Kenya’s Siaya district. Two-thirds of the population live below the poverty line, one in four is infected with HIV, one in three children is orphaned, and the doctor-to-patient ratio is 1:96,000. Yet sparks of brilliance and resilience like that of Lawrence give us hope. Lawrence is not a jua kali, but might be if he could afford the risk associated with executing his ideas. Instead, Lawrence remains a smallholder farmer along the Yala River, but spends free time designing furniture and tools. He uses a KickStart MoneyMaker treadle pump to irrigate his plot, but after many tireless days of pumping (KickStart pumps demand eight hours of work per day), he began to brainstorm new mechanisms for getting water from the river to his maize. One day, an idea struck him: he could use the current from the river to run both a pump and a generator!
Using only knowledge from secondary school physics, he designed a water wheel and gear reduction mechanism to run his pump (pictured). However, when he hired a welder to build a prototype, the fabricator left town with his money and materials. He isn’t eligible for a loan, and he travels for days by bicycle to reach a market where he can gather materials. All the while, he must sustain his failing crops so his family can survive. That is the risk the jua kali must weigh when entering new terrain, especially those who lack the infrastructure afforded by urban clusters. After a rough calculation, Lawrence showed me that a prototype would cost a mere USD 125 (about the price of a MoneyMaker pump produced in China). He knew how to build it—it was just too risky for him to lay out the time and money. The risk problem is one that
plagues innovation on the continent; investments often occur at the expense of day-to-day survival for entrepreneurs and their families. Most, unlike Lawrence, simply accept the status quo that guarantees some income, however small. In reality, Lawrence’s design wasn’t perfect, but iterations of prototyping or access to experts would help him stumble upon the optimal pump design, just as William Kamkwamba (See “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind” in Chapter Three) refined his windmill in successive implementations. How might external actors provide a platform for launching indigenous African ideas? Is it possible to alleviate the risk inventors face so they can spend more time developing technologies and businesses like Lawrence’s that stand to revolutionize the local landscape? Source: Personal interviews.