I keep an eye on these guys because when it comes to rolling over into the next phase of human development, knowing how to reuse precision-machined materials will be critical: Hardware Hacking: Handmade Tools in Africa.
Fabrication is an important skill in developing nations. Along the whole process you see reuse taking place, even down to the tools being used to create the items in question.
A Kenyan micro-entrepreneur recently told me:
In the sixties, during the space race between Russia and the U.S.A the Russian Engineers, when told there was no more money for the budget philosophically said “now we have no money then we can think” and they were able to be tremendously creative when compared to the Americans despite the limited funds at their disposal.
To the extent that the US is now using the Russian design for heavy-lift rocket engines because they are cheaper, lighter, more reliable and more powerful than the Amercian ones.
This is the same approach I use in my initiatives.
Its something we all need to do more about. I have a massifve crowbar that I call Archimedes because if i could just find a place to stand I probably COULD move the world with it, my father in law made it out of the drive shaft of a 36 Chev. He used an old Ford drive sghaft for the equally serious crowbar, both of which he gifted to me a while back.
There's a lot to be learned from the people at Afrigadget, ep[secially tyheir perspective that superfluous machines are a source not only of raw material to be smelted down and recast, but of high-strength materials that can be re-used and especially high- precision resources capable of transmitting enormous power. (Think wheel bearings, a gearbox, a diff or the valve train off the front of a V8 there'll be PLENTY of those to be had for nothing in the next few years)
Remanufacturing is also a high-energy process and when energy is expensive, only the most important products will be made that way. When we start seeing unnecessary machines as collections of bearings, pumnps, generators, reduction and multiplication systems, we'll realise that we are surrounded by useful tools that can be put to the purposes of sustaining lfe instead of threatening it.
OK, rain has stopped, back to the garden
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