So, I just read the innovation in Africa wordpress and it did get me in a few spots. I really wouldn't have thought that someone used to doing something one way would shun a better way for it. I'm used to people I know, the people that surround me, that will struggle to use something new and more advanced even when it seems harder than the things they know. You might understand now that this is not what this post is about, merely something that stuck out to me.
Amy Smiths segment is what really shined and in three distinct segments that reminded me of a true to world story I have heard, from Africa no less. First was Try living for a week on $2 a day. Poverty is a real problem and when trying to solve it we must first consider the resources of those available to whom the problem is real and current. Seeing the problem through their eyes is a very real way to see what you have to work with, even in the slightest sense of the problem.
The second two I feel are able to be combined into a single item. 'If you want to make something 10 times cheaper, remove 90 percent of the material' and 'Provide skills, not just finished technologies.' How many still remember William Kamkwamba I wonder. He found a problem and using the meager resources at hand devised a solution. I wonder how many others would find their situations improved with a mere doc**ent instructing them on how to put together such things with the things available to them. Not giving them premade items at the cost of putting food on their tables, but low cost plans telling them how to make things with the things they have.
Just a thought...
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