H-Fablab – Fuelling sustainable innovative solutions in Côte d’Ivoire;  starting with young makers

H-Fablab – Fuelling sustainable innovative solutions in Côte d’Ivoire;  starting with young makers

By Mugethi Gitau Comment Closed
Dodji Honou conducting a practical training for kids at H-Fablab (all photos courtesy of H-Fablab) In the neighborhood of Bingerville about 45 minutes -1 hour from Abidjan, in the district of Angré,  stands H-FABLAB.  A digital manufacturing laboratory whose primary objective is to promote learning by doing among young people, whether or not in school, literate or not in French. The space was opened formally  in Sep 2021, but had been running informally for 2 years before that. They enjoy good internet access via a fiber connection, though electricity can be sometimes unstable Dodji Honou is  the founder of H-Fablab. His story begins in Togo, where he was born. And where his story with makerspaces  and innovation hubs began. He was a member of  Woelab now expanded into Hubcity in Togo, and in 2013 while there, his story with GIG also began. He met GIGers, Geraldine and Max , who introduced him to GIG.  He later moved on to Senegal to work with a...
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Education, Bits and Trees Festival for digitization and sustainability in education

A two-day learning festival for students and lecturers of pedagogical courses, teachers and school administrations, pupils and everyone who wants to rethink and redesign learning. Let's develop concrete ideas together on how to bring future topics related to sustainability and digitization into schools!  By the way, teachers can have their participation in the festival recognized as further training. More info. And otherwise? The ticket includes coffee, delicious food and a sophisticated supporting program with yoga, dance workshops, a massage room and much more! Tickets are available here!* *pssst: The tickets are also valid for the Bits & Bäume conference taking place at the same time! Find full information about the program/schedule on their website here Event organized by:Junge Tüftler*innen (Young Tinkerers), TU Berlin (Technical University) and Education Innovation Lab. ...
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Building Innovation in Nepal: Impact Hub Kathmandu

Building Innovation in Nepal: Impact Hub Kathmandu

By Mugethi Gitau Comment Closed
photo courtesy of Impact Hub Kathmandu Impact Hub Kathmandu is an open, inclusive and collaborative space designed to give social innovators, entrepreneurs and change-makers somewhere to meet, work, network and learn. They provide a friendly open space that welcomes people from all across Kathmandu, and beyond! They are part of a global network of 105+ Impact Hubs in over 60 countries, working across disciplines, acting across sectors, with amazing people putting ideas into action.  Impact Hub KTM provides business support to Nepali entrepreneurs and businesses with a social purpose. They connect, inspire and support impact entrepreneurs to scale up their projects and enterprises to address some of Nepal’s challenges,  convening changemakers to convert their passion and commitments into meaningful projects. They also have FabLab Nepal, a digital fabrication laboratory to learn, play, create, mentor, invent, and innovate. They provide access to the environment, the skills, the materials, and the advanced technology to allow anyone to make (almost) anything. Since establishment, they have worked...
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Africa Makerspace Network practical training session

Africa Makerspace Network practical training session

The second edition of the AMN Practical Training Session is set to happen on the 26th August, 2022 and is themed, “DIY and Everyday Hacks for Makerspaces”. This edition is centered on knowledge exchange on the theme. Participants would demonstrate simple hacks and DIYs that can be adopted to make work easier and faster in the makerspace setting.Venue: Zoom. Event link would be shared with participants once they register.Participant registration link;bit.ly/AMN-PracWk22 Inquiries should be channeled through info@africamakerspace.net The African Makerspace Network (AMN) is a community of African Makerspaces comprising researchers, innovators, hobbyists and students that use tools and equipment within a structured space for skills and knowledge sharing, community problem solving towards attaining a sustainable development in Africa. The Network birthed in 2019 currently has in its community about 27 makerspaces from across 10 African countries including Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Côte d'Ivoire and Botswana. The purpose of enhancing harmonization among makerspaces in the African region to...
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AfricaOSH 2022 Cameroon

AfricaOSH 2022 Cameroon

AfricaOSH is an annual summit taking place on a rotating basis across the regions of Africa. A 3 day event consisted of presentations, brainstorming and panel discussion on sharing science and hardware to promote African innovation. The AfricaOSH Summit is a grassroots effort to bring together a community of researchers, educators, innovators, makers, makerspaces, and many more. This year’s Summit applications are now open to everyone. The Summit is slated for September 29th to October 1st at MboaLab, Yaounde-Cameroon. Apply with the link below:https://bit.ly/AOSH_Summit22https://bit.ly/AOSH_Summit22 Deadline for applications is on the 31st July 2022...Le sommet AfricaOSH est une communauté de chercheurs, d’éducateurs, d’innovateurs, de fabricants, de makerspaces, et bien d’autres. Les candidatures pour le sommet de cette année sont maintenant ouvertes à tous. La date limite pour les candidatures est le 31 juillet 2022. Nous espérons vous voir au Cameroun. Postulez avec le lien ci-dessoushttps://bit.ly/AOSH_Summit22 The aim of the summit is to discuss all the opportunities for Africa, offered by Open Science and its various trends and topics (Citizen sciences,...
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IGF 2022 Ethiopia

IGF 2022 Ethiopia

image from IGF 2022 website The 17th IGF, under the overarching theme Resilient Internet for a Shared Sustainable and Common Future, will be held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from 28 November to 2 December 2022. The meeting programme is guided by five themes drawn from the Global Digital Compact in the UN Secretary-General's Our Common Agenda report. The IGF 2022 Call for Session Proposals invites stakeholders to propose sessions on those themes and is open until 3 June 2022. A Fully Hybrid IGFThe 17th annual IGF will be hosted in a hybrid format. The meeting will aim at accommodating the participation of stakeholders present onsite in Addis Ababa or participating online in an equitable manner. This hybrid approach also extends to the session organizing teams (organizers, speakers, moderators and rapporteurs) who will participate online or onsite.  The overall objective is to make participation in IGF 2022 meaningful and inclusive for all participants.  Elements of the hybrid format are currently under careful review by organizers. Participating PlatformThe 17th IGF will be hosted on a unique digital platform where meeting discussions will take place...
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Tropixel Brazil 2022

Tropixel Brazil 2022

Tropixel is a community that operates on the borders between culture, science, technology and society, dreaming of regenerative futures for our side of the world. Tropixel Sementes (seeds) is a self-organized meeting of the Tropixel network. At this moment in Brazil and the world, it is essential that we meet again and design (continue designing) joint strategies for this difficult year. There are elections at the end of the year, and that is a challenge in itself. In every state and across the country, 2023 will also be intense. So let's meet and discuss either creating ways to survive even worse conditions, or starting to regenerate from the rubble (and regenerating is not rebuilding, it is not repeating, it is not resuming old premises). Plans Tropixel Sementes will take place over four days at the headquaters of Instituto Neos; a fantastic space surrounded by Atlantic Forest .  Instituto Neos headquaters. Image from Ubatuba Wiki It's a date, not a festival. In other words: Tropixel doesn't imagine having...
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International Repair Day

International Repair Day

International Repair Day is a joint initiative of the Open Repair Alliance, celebrated every year on the third Saturday of October. In 2022, Repair Day will take place on Saturday 15th October. The theme for the 2022 edition is still to be announced, but it’s never too early to start planning your own celebration. Celebrate Repair Day Check out their resources and get involved! There are many things you can do to celebrate International Repair Day: from attempting to fix something yourself to dropping by a local shop and get your devices back to life. We want everyone to take pride in fixing their things, and to motivate fixers – enthusiasts and professionals – to share their repair skills and get others involved. We want everyone to be part of Repair Day, online as well as offline. Here are some ideas to get involved on the day: Attend or organise a community repair eventSupport a local repair businessFix something yourself, or share your skills with othersShare a picture of...
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ECSA 2022 Conference: Citizen Science for Planetary Health

ECSA 2022 Conference: Citizen Science for Planetary Health

Photo by Florian Wehde on Unsplash Why “Citizen Science for Planetary Health”? Because the health of our planet is at risk. To preserve and support the well-being of all life on Earth, we need the commitment and efforts of everyone – policy makers, the public, business, science and research. Citizen science offers effective and innovative ways to do transdisciplinary research and influence decision-making in multiple areas and ways. Citizen science is particularly suited to connect diverse fields and diverse actors in the common endeavour of collaborating in research.The concept of planetary health is based on the understanding that human health and human civilization depend on thriving natural systems and the sustainable stewardship of those natural systems. This demands not only knowledge, commitment and engagement of health and environmental sciences, but inter- and transdisciplinary efforts from all research fields and societal and political actors. The ECSA 2022 Conference invites researchers from all disciplines, civil society actors, citizen scientists, policy decision-makers and all interested in the topic in...
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Gosanitize! Go Girls ICT (South Sudan)’s response to Covid 19

Gosanitize! Go Girls ICT (South Sudan)’s response to Covid 19

By Mugethi Gitau Comment Closed
South Sudan is a country that depends entirely on imports from its neighboring countries and during the pandemic, products such as hand sanitizers became more expensive as their demand was high and not affordable to the common person in the community. GoGirls inspiration to research and come up with a hand sanitizer called Gosanitize from locally sourced resources within South Sudan was because of the above challenges. About Go Girls ICTGoGirls ICT Initiative is a Juba, South Sudan based non-profit initiative founded by a group of dedicated young women in the fields of Computer Science, Information Systems, ICT4D Innovation, hacktivism and peace-building. Ten female local brewers were trained to make highly concentrated alcohol (Ethanol) for use in the hand sanitizer. To achieve this, GoGirls ICT Initiative team together with chemistry experts, had a peer-to-peer virtual mentorship exchange with Bibliothèque-MboaLab, Cameroon. But alas! A hurdle. To enable this project to succeed, they needed to overcome a major hurdle: religious beliefs and the extent...
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