Inventions in Africa

AFRICA

THE MOTHER OF INVENTION

by Danielle Fine

“Necessity is the mother of invention” — English proverb

“Who was the first that forged the deadly blade? Of rugged steel his savage soul was made.”—Tibullus “Thousands of years ago, civilizations flourished in Africa which suffer not at all by comparison with those of other continents.” —Haile Selassie

Africa. The continent that birthed the human race, with its infinite capacity for imagination and the indomitable will to survive. Deprived of the claws and furs of the animals that were both our predators and our prey, we had to rely on that imagination to give us the tools of survival and meet our changing needs. In short, we had to become a continent of intrepid inventors.

Looking at these, the instruments and institutions we’ve developed through the years, gives us insight into the conditions and struggles people in Africa have faced, and continue to overcome on a daily basis.

With mankind’s history stretching back into Africa’s warm cradle, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the very first inventions can be traced to her fertile soil. Our earliest creations were focused only on survival, on giving us the edge to keep ahead of our hairy competitors for very limited resources.

At around the time our earliest ancestors moved from primarily consuming gathered food to a more meat-based diet, ancient hominins founded the first stone tool industry, the Olduwan, in East Africa around 2.3 million BC. It consisted mainly of tools used to chop, pound, and scrape, enabling hominids like Homo habilis to butcher meat.

When technology advanced from manipulating materials to make tools, to creating those materials, the innovators were found here as well. Some of the earliest ironworking technology—including copper smelting and high-heat blast furnaces—was also invented in Africa, in southern Tanzania and northern Zambia at around 3000 BC. The Haya people of Tanzania have been able to forge steel for about 2000 years—several centuries before the process was discovered in Europe.

With the advent of civilization, mankind’s focus widened from being purely survival driven to embracing the gathering and furthering of knowledge, and the improvement of the quality of human life. This is reflected in the inventions of this age, which range from understanding the mysteries of our anatomy to contemplating the infinite reaches of space. Ethiopia is widely regarded as the first established country, and was evidently the first to implement laws, religion, and international trade, as well as being the first to discover coffee

(for which they get my undying gratitude). Philosophy was taught in Ancient Egypt from around 2800 BC, and you only have to look at the ruins in Egypt, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, and the Sudan to see the incredible contributions Africa made to early architecture, with the Step Pyramid in Saqqara generally recognised as the oldest stone building in the world.

The Egyptians have reputedly been star-gazing for almost 10 000 years, and have the astonishing cosmic alignments of the pyramids and the Nabta Playa stones as proof. This also led to them developing the first calendar to use a 365-day year divided into 12 parts. Some academics speculate that the Egyptians inherited their astronomical knowledge from the Ethiopians. The Dogon people of Mali performed detailed astronomical observations and calculations and knew of the existence of Saturn’s rings, Jupiter’s moons, Sirius B, and the spiral shape of the Milky Way, many years before their European counterparts.

The earliest known surgery was performed in Egypt in 2750 BC and the earliest recorded physician, Hesy-Ra, was Egyptian. They had extensive pharmacological knowledge and a basic understanding of the functioning of the brain, liver and heart—using this knowledge to treat a wide variety of ailments, including skin disease, dental problems and even tumours. Egyptian medical thought influenced the Greeks, including the “Father of Medicine”, Hippocrates.

Narrowing our focus to more specific inventions in modern medicine, we can see that Africans have made significant contributions throughout the ages, starting with Max Theiler, a South African who, in 1937, developed the vaccine against yellow fever and became the first Nobel Laureate from Africa.

On 3 December 1967, Dr Christiaan Barnard of South Africa performed the world’s first successful human-to-human heart transplant at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town. The operation took nine hours and a team of 30 doctors and was a milestone in life-extending surgery, even though the patient only lived for 18 more days.

Although the Computed Axial Tomography (CAT) Scanner was jointly developed with a British electrical engineer, a South African physicist, Allan Cormack, developed algorithms that use X-ray scans and electronic detectors rotated around the body to create a tomographic, or 3D, image of the body. Opening a new field in medical research and diagnostics earned the duo the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1979.

A biomedical engineering inventor, Selig Percy Amoils, created the Retinal CryoProbe at Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto, South Africa, in 1975. This device removed cataracts using cryosurgery—destroying abnormal or diseased tissue by means of extreme cold.

Most recently, in December 2014, doctors at Stellenbosch University in South Africa performed the world’s first successful penile transplant. The recipient was a young man who’d had his penis amputated after a botched circumcision.

The Egyptians weren’t only forerunners in medicine, however; they were also pioneers in the technological field, inventing ramps, paper, clocks, ships, maps, pottery and glass. Their bold example has been followed by many Africans in modern times.

The dolos, a concrete block in a complicated geometric shape, was invented by two South African harbour engineers, Aubrey Kruger and Eric Merrifield, in 1963, to prevent erosion from wave action in harbours. The concrete dolosse form an interlocking porous wall that deflects waves to the side.

While trying to develop an adhesive to hold the components in a cable-junction box together, a South African engineer from Krugersdorp, George Pratley, invented Pratley Putty. The putty was later used in the Apollo XI mission to hold parts of the lunar lander together, and to stop cracking in one of the supports of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

A swimming pool vacuum cleaner, the Kreepy Krauly, was invented by Ferdinand Chauvier, a hydraulics engineer from Springs, South Africa, in 1974, and is still in use today.

Henri Johnson, an inventor from Somerset West in South Africa, developed the Speedball—a handheld device which

accurately measures the speed and angles of speeding objects like tennis and cricket balls. It was officially launched at The Oval in London, England, during the 1999 Cricket World Cup.

In 2008, South Africa developed its first electric car, the Joule. It can travel at speeds of up to 135km/h and has a distance range of about 150km before it needs to be charged—which takes between 10 and 12 hours. Reducing fuel costs by 80% and having fewer moving parts, it’s cheaper and easier to service than the standard combustion engine. The Joule produces no tailpipe emissions, making it environmentally friendly as well as efficient.

Our northern neighbours are no less intrepid, with Segun Oyeyiola, a Nigerian student, retrofitting a Volkswagen Beetle into a wind- and solar-powered car at a cost of less than $6000. With a solar panel on the roof and a wind turbine under the bonnet, it also comes with a GPS app that measures the car’s overall health.

As we move forward into the future, new innovations coming out of Africa deal more and more with the needs of a continent struggling with poverty, dwindling resources and failing infrastructure. Many areas in Africa are still without reliable electricity and safe water, and the keen minds of Africa’s brightest are working on solutions.

The Freeplay monitor is a power-free foetal heart monitor that uses a hand crank to generate its own electricity. Invented by Philip Goodwin, Stefan Zwahlen, and John Hutchinson from Cape Town in South Africa, it was created for use in rural, underdeveloped areas where about 500 000 women in Africa die annually in childbirth, often from preventable complications.

Along the same lines is the Cardiopad, developed by a Cameroonian engineer, Arthur Zang. The touch-screen medical tablet enables heart examinations, such as the ECG (electrocardiogram), to be performed in remote locations, sending the results to qualified professionals for interpretation.

A young Kenyan engineer, Evans Wadongo, has developed an award-winning solar lamp, which he’s named MwangaBora or “Good Light” in Swahili. This light is cheaper, more efficient and healthier than the most prevalent form of lighting in poverty-stricken rural areas— the kerosene lamp, which, aside from being expensive and a fire risk, can cause respiratory illness and damage eyesight.

Repurpose Schoolbags, created by Rea Ngwane and Thea Kgatlhanye from Rustenburg in South Africa, are schoolbags made from recycled plastic bags that contain a solar lantern -this charges up during the day, giving students from underprivileged areas an emission-free light to study by at night.

Anthony Mutua from Kenya invented a thin crystal chip that can be inserted into any shoe to generate electricity when the wearer walks. This electricity can be used to charge a cellphone either during a walk or immediately after, as the chip can also store electric energy. If you’re more of a cycling enthusiast, an innovative electrician from Tanzania, Bernard Kiwia, has developed a bike-powered dynamo also used to charge cellphones.

DryBath, a topical, moisturising, biodegradable germicidal gel, was invented by Ludwick Marishane, a student from Limpopo province in South Africa, when he was just 17 years old! This innovative product—the first of its kind in the world—could be a lifesaver for the more than 2.5 billion people worldwide who don’t have access to clean water and often die from easily treatable diseases found in stagnant water.

Ronnie Stuiver of Delmas in South Africa adapted a children’s merry-go-round into the Playpump, a device for pumping water. As children spin on the merry-go-round, it drives a borehole pump, which extracts water from underground and pumps it into a tank, where it can be easily accessed using a tap.

Although the glory of the ancient civilizations might be far behind us, it’s clear that Africa is still producing some of the world’s top thinkers and innovators, and that these great minds are bent on moving Africa, and the world, into a better future.

“We are kept keen on the grindstone of pain and necessity.” —H.G. Wells, The Time Machine