A crash course in changing the world.
I remember a professor of mine defining culture as a pattern of common behaviour.
If we want to intervene in the lives of rural Africans, we need to understand how they live their lives. It is the responsibility of the women to fetch water and cook for the family. So if you have a device that helps collect or carry water, it must be light enough that a woman with a baby on her back can carry it.
Whatever the problem is that we're seeking a solution for, a critical first step is to understand the culture and context into which our intervention is going to be placed. That's why there were quite a few points in the "Design in Africa" text that talk about understanding the context - "Don't fight the culture"; "Innovate on existing platforms"; "Problems are not always obvious from afar"; "What you have matters more than what you lack"; "Try living on $2 a day". All of these ideas point towards understanding the context that you're going into as well as you can.
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