Kofi Atta Annan
8 April 1938 – 18 August 2018
was a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh secretary-general of the United Nations from 1997 to 2006. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize. He was the founder and chairman of the Kofi Annan Foundation, as well as chairman of The Elders, an international organisation founded by Nelson Mandela.
No Words!
Last month Mawuna Remarque Koutonin, an editor of siliconafrica.com, has made a vibrant call to “Close the Incubators and Accelerators, and Open FabLabs and MakerSpaces instead”, simply because Africa needs more people with the skills to fabricate something than additional people with oratory prowess. “More Makers, Not More Pitchers” is the basic message.
(from siliconafrica.com)
Mawuna Remarque Koutonin has recently met Koffi Sénamé Agbodjinou, founder of WoeLab, the first MakerSpace in Togo (West Africa). And, starting from today, he will start featuring the few African MakerSpaces which have the power to bring technology to the masses.
In the following Interview, Agbodjinou shared with him his passion for making things, his dedication to empowering people with technology through open and democratic projects and spaces, and above all his dream to “Make Everybody Equal in Front of New Technologies.”
I have always been interested in the know-how and the efficient organizational system of african traditional societies. That’s why I have this double training of anthropologist and architect with an interest in reuse of traditional forms, economical options and self-build.
For a while I ignored the ICT environment because I thought it was remote of these worlds of modesty where I evolved, associating it to individualism, waste and pollution. This mistrust vanished little time ago when I discovered what the philosopher Pekka Himanen name « The Hacker Ethic » : recycling, solidarity, economy of means, autonomy… These values which are characteristic of a certain approach of ICT (particularly hackerspace and FabLab) and which reminded me strangely what I have been used to observe in traditional groups.
So I began first, in a research perspective, wondering how to put in relationship and make collaborate in the transformation of the African cities these two universes who share apparently some common values. I tried to establish a dialog between the hacker of the MIT and the traditional tamberma builder, both of them ‘makers’, according to my intuition.
One thing leading to another, the idea came to create a space to underline this identified proximity. I was so motivated to do it especially because my vision was that these new open-spaces and their technologies was the source of future important upheavals. It is an intuition which has just been validated by President Barack Obama himself because, in the famous Speech on the State of the Union of this week, he clearly suggested that the technologies like 3D printing which develops now in Labs will be the source of the next Industrial Revolution.
In short, in our approach, we can also find the sense of urgency and a responsibility to work so that Africa does not miss this new train on the departure.
We began modestly, last summer with our own funds and some recycling. We first occupied a classroom of a small primary school; in return of some renovation works, we made. The operation is piloted by the association ‘L’Africaine d’architecture’. Since, the community has been tripled and, after six months of operations, WoeLab is a fast growing adventure with its very young team.
We can say that until now, we tried to consolidate the capacities of the community, in particular with public sessions of OpenSource machines co-making. For that we did some workshops like the Boot-Woe-Camp last December. About sixty young people came and worked around different projects like the creation of a little digital milling CNC or the fabrication of an educational robot.
With our new place we will open permanently, respecting liberty, exchange and transparency. Through this three preoccupation I define our position: Democracy of Technology, Coworking (make collaborate people of various horizons, social classes, ages and expertises) and OpenSource.
In due term, WoeLab aspires to be a virtuous system with technologies in free access inside a friendly environment with benevolent ecosystem. In such an environment, passionate people will be ready to share their knowledge and transmit. Also, we’ll find intellectual, human and tool- resources to realize all kind of projects corresponding to our scope statement « LowHighTech !
« We gonna do it !»
You have 3 main activities: You act as a resource center, an incubator for early stage startups, and also as a networking place bringing together the various players in ICT fields in Togo. Can you share with us how are these activities going?
These three activities are complementary, they enrich each other : Collective Intelligence generated thanks to the status of spaces of Networking feed the startups which are incubated. Those one have a moral contract: donate a part of their benefits to keep alive the place, to maintain it open and free –access to our neighborhood.
We haven’t yet found the potential of 3D printer in African context. Nevertheless, it’s a wonderful tool to educate to the ‘hacker’ mentality and Fablab. According to our experience, it’s the ideal model of co-making project for establishing relationships and learning while making.
First, we have started the assembly of one of these 3D printers (RepRap ‘: Mendel Prusa) with a kit from France. Spontaneously Afate realized the difficulty of getting a kit to make our projects possible. He began to build an empowering 3D printer made only with recycling, e-waste. The W.Afate is the first african 3D printer and the biggest pride of the Lab. The project is well advanced and we are beginning the phase of its documentation.
For me, it’s difficult to project myself so far. I can only say where we might be the next month.
This March, we begin the campaign ‘MI LA WOE’ (“We gonna do it”). It’s the second big time of our adventure. After a first time dedicated to the constitution of the core of the Lab and the consolidation of its capacity, I think that we are now ready to begin our principal challenge: go out and meet the population and begin to see to what extent we can be an appropriate answer to questions of everyday life.
We hope to discover that we are a “tool” that little people can easily use. We are planning workshops with women, a caravan inside the country and the thematic opening of the space dedicated to small craftsmen. The main axes of the program are: *Fablab and rurality, *Fablab and informal sector in Africa, *FabLab and improved quality of urban life. I think we will be judged based on our ability to handle basic issues in Togo, .
The projects which are developed in the WoeLab might have implications in all kind of field. An example : currently Sam, one of the Lab residents, is working on an independent refrigeration system working with solar energy. It’s a project, which if it succeeds, might change the life our moms in the markets.
That being said, we don’t want to reduce our work to activities that correspond to people need (It would seem like we always decide for them and there is the risk to be paralyzed if we have no ideas). We want the empowerment of the communities but also in the choice of their project.
This is why the option is to first enable ordinary people with the power to make by themselves through the acquisition of the mastery of iconic technologies of MakerSpaces like the RepRap. Then we bet that populations, when they will be initiated, will transform the use of those technologies to develop themselves their own projects closest to their daily preoccupations.
That’ also why we would like to promote the multiplications of MakerSpaces beginning from ours. We are convinced that more communities will be free from the influence of our WoeLab and will conquer new territories, more we will achieve our goal : discovering new problematics. We are going in this direction with the ‘RepLab’ program.
It’s a concept of alternative urbanization. It wants to give back to our populations the power of transforming the place where they are living thanks to a program of « Camps » of architecture (to propose solutions) and « Labs » (to make and replicate solutions). This concept might encourage the african city of tomorrow to become responsible and virtuous with an experimental architecture which will use local improved materials. We begin to experiment this method in some areas in Lomé. I am working on this project in our community. It’s probably one of the most ambitious project of WoeLab.
We do not have the same resources as other african FabLab witch are directly under the MIT Labs Initiative or other Western networks initiatives. And to be faithful to the hacker ethic, we have chosen so far not to introduce funding requests to public institutions or big groups. So we fund our space trough spontaneous acts of solidarity and donations.
We collect all kinds of tools and materials that can still be used. And we are mainly asking for new projects and are paying attention to all kind of collaboration proposals with other HackerSpaces or Fablabs in the world. We also offer our know-how and lessons learned to any Makerspace which would arrive in Togo.
We’ve recently received Mo Ajala from Nigeria, who is developing the idea on an innovative and ambitious project in Lagos implying the FabLab concept . This kind of visits is very enriching and stimulating for our dynamics. Roughly we would like to favor the exchanges of services, experiences and skills sharing rather than the financial exchanges. It will be possible soon also support directly projects incubated in the Lab via online sponsorship web sites.
I feel a bit like a traveler who has discovered this possibility that Einstein had suggested and that mathematicians call ‘wormhole’: a channel which allows, in a time folded on itself, to communicate in two different space-time .
I observe the young people of this small community that I manage, I see an incredible potential; but which requires to be put in the service of a real vision. It is certainly, for me personally, the biggest challenge. The African are submerged by information and have difficulty in sorting out.
If WoeLab can very modestly contribute to be this software, which allows to identify, to hold and to sublimate what is good for us, then the adventure will have been worth it.
Kenya’s Wilson Kipsang broke the marathon world record in Berlin on Sunday in a new official best time of 2hs 3 mins and 23 seconds.(from sports.yahoo.com)
Kispang, 31, shaved 15 seconds off the previous world record set by compatriot Patrick Makau, who ran 2:03.38 over 42.195 kilometres (26.2miles) in the German capital two years ago.
Kipsang Winner London Marathon 2012
Kenya’s Eliud Kipchoge, who won the Hamburg marathon in April on his debut over the distance, finished second in a personal best time of 2:04.05 with compatriot Geoffrey Kipsang third with 2:06.26.
This is the ninth time a world record has been set in Berlin and five men’s world records have been set here in the last decade alone.
Makau was missing in the German capital having withdrawn a fortnight ago with a knee injury.
The women’s race was won by Kenya’s Florence Kiplagat, the 2011 winner in Berlin, in an
Winner Berlin Marathon 2011
unofficial time of 2hrs 21mins 13secs, six minutes off Paula Radcliffe’s world record set ten years ago in London.Germany’s Irina Mikitenko finished third to break the world masters record for the over 40s, in a time of 2:24.54.
Having trained specifically to break the world record in Berlin, Kipsang, the Olympic bronze medallist, broke away from the leading pack in the final 10 kilometres and ran his own race.
The elite group had been on world record pace up until the 29km, but when the tempo dropped, Kipsang took matters into his own hands and was three seconds under the necessary pace in the final two kilometres.
Having run a previous personal best in 2011 when he went within Makau’s previous world record in Frankfurt, Kipsang added the Berlin title to his CV having won the London marathon in 2012.
Kenya’s parliament voted on Thursday to quit the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, but the Dutch-based tribunal said it would press ahead anyway with the trials of its president and his deputy. (from reuters.com)
Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto are accused of orchestrating violence after elections in 2007. About 1,200 people were killed in ethnic blood-letting that plunged east Africa’s biggest economy into crisis.
The ICC’s first trial of a sitting president is viewed as the biggest test to date for an institution that has faced mounting criticism in Kenya and across Africa, where it is accused of bias as all the suspects to date have been Africans.
Support for the process, which once had broad backing in Kenya, has been eroded since the peaceful vote in March this year that elected Kenyatta, the son of the country’s founding leader.
Parliament, dominated by the alliance that brought him to power, voted in favour of telling the government to withdraw from the ICC.
“I am setting the stage to redeem the image of the Republic of Kenya,” Aden Duale, the majority leader from Kenyatta’s Jubilee coalition, said on behalf of the motion.
Opposing him, minority leader Francis Nyenze warned: “We’ll be seen as a pariah state, we’ll be seen as people who are reactionary and who want to have their way.”
The ICC said earlier that even if Kenya voted to withdraw, its departure from the first permanent international criminal court would take at least a year and would have no effect on cases already in train.
Ruto’s trial starts on Tuesday and Kenyatta’s in November, despite Kenyan efforts to have the cases dropped or moved nearer home. Both men have attended pre-trial hearings and have said they will continue to cooperate.
Chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said earlier on Thursday that both cases would go ahead.
Fensouda also said there had been repeated threats and bribes aimed at persuading relatives of witnesses in the cases to disclose their whereabouts.
“Witnesses have gone to great lengths to risk their lives and the lives of their relatives to support our investigations and prosecutions,” the prosecutor said in a video posted on the court’s website.
The newest outpost in the US government’s empire of drone bases sits behind a razor-wire-topped wall outside Niamey, blasted by 40C heat and the occasional sandstorm blowing from the Sahara.
The US air force began flying a handful of unarmed Predator drones from here last month. The grey, mosquito-shaped aircraft emerge sporadically from a borrowed hangar and soar north in search of al-Qaida fighters and guerrillas from other groups hiding in the region’s deserts and hills.
The harsh terrain of north and west Africa is rapidly emerging as yet another front in the long-running US war against terrorist networks, a conflict that has fuelled a revolution in drone warfare.
Since taking office in 2009, President Barack Obama has relied heavily on drones for operations, both declared and covert, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya and Somalia. US drones also fly from allied bases in Turkey, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and the Philippines.
Now they are becoming a fixture in Africa. The US military has built a major drone hub in Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa, and flies unarmed Reaper drones from Ethiopia. Until recently, it conducted reconnaissance flights over east Africa from the island nation of Seychelles.
The Predator drones in Niger, a landlocked and dirt-poor country, give the Pentagon a strategic foothold in west Africa. Niger shares a long border with Mali, where an al-Qaida affiliate and other Islamist groups have taken root. Niger also borders Libya and Nigeria, which are also struggling to contain armed extremist movements.
Like other US drone bases, the Predator operations in Niger are shrouded in secrecy. The White House announced in February that Obama had deployed about 100 military personnel to Niger on an “intelligence collection” mission, but it did not make any explicit reference to drones. Since then, the defence department has publicly acknowledged the presence of drones here but has revealed little else. The Africa Command, which oversees US military missions on the continent, denied requests from a Washington Post reporter to interview American troops in Niger or to tour the military airfield where the drones are based, near Niamey’s international airport.
Government officials in Niger, a former French colony, were slightly more forthcoming. President Issoufou Mahamadou said his government invited Washington to send surveillance drones because he was worried that the country might not be able to defend its borders from Islamist fighters based in Mali, Libya or Nigeria.
“We welcome the drones,” Mahamadou said in an interview at the presidential palace in Niamey. Citing the “feeble capability” of many west African militaries, he said Niger and its neighbours desperately needed foreign help to track the movements of guerrillas across the Sahara and Sahel, an arid territorial belt that covers much of the region.
“Our countries are like the blind leading the blind,” he said. “We rely on countries like France and the United States. We need co-operation to ensure our security.”
The Predator drones in Niger are unarmed, US officials said, though they have not ruled out equipping the aircraft with Hellfire missiles in the future. For now, the drones are conducting surveillance over Mali and Niger.
US officials said they share video footage and other intelligence collected by the unmanned aircraft with French forces and African troops – including 670 soldiers from Niger – who are fighting the Islamist insurgency in Mali. Liaison officers from Niger, France and Chad work alongside US air force personnel who launch and land the drones from the base in Niamey.
Most of the surveillance missions are designed to track broad patterns of human activity and are not aimed at hunting individuals, said a senior US official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss military operations. Although French and African troops are engaged in combat in Mali, the Obama administration has not given the US military the same authorisation.
“The whole issue is lethality,” the senior official said. “We don’t want to abet a lethal action.”
But the rules of engagement are blurry. Intelligence gathered by the Predators could indirectly help the French fix targets for airstrikes or prompt Nigerien security forces to take action on their territory.
Moreover, US officials have acknowledged that they could use lethal force under certain circumstances. Last month, army general Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress that the US military had designated “a handful of high-value individuals” in north Africa for their suspected connections to al-Qaida, making them potential targets for capture or killing.
The Pentagon declined to say exactly how many Predator aircraft it has sent to Niger or how long it intends to keep them there. But there are signs that the US military wants to establish a long-term presence in west Africa.
After years of negotiations, the Obama administration signed an agreement with Niger in January that provides judicial protection and other safeguards for US troops in the country.
Two US defence officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning, said the Pentagon ultimately wants to move the Predators to the Saharan city of Agadez, in northern Niger.
Agadez is closer to parts of southern Algeria and southern Libya where fighters and arms traffickers allied with al-Qaida have taken refuge. The airfield in Agadez, however, is rudimentary and needs improvements before it can host drones, officials said.
The US military has used Agadez since last year as a refuelling stop for U-28 spy planes – small, piloted aircraft flown by private contractors. US officials have hesitated to send those surveillance aircraft across the border into Mali because of fears that the crews could be taken hostage if the planes crash or are shot down.
Government officials in Niger declined to say whether they viewed the US drones as a short-term fix or a permanent addition. “I can’t tell you how long they will be here,” said Mahamadou, the president. “How long it will take to stabilise Mali is one factor. The stabilisation of Libya is another.”
At the same time, he said Niger cannot rely on French and US military forces forever and needs to ensure its own security. To that end, the US government has agreed to give Niger two Cessna Grand Caravan aircraft to transport troops and conduct surveillance.
“The intelligence is crucial for us,” said Colonel Mamane Souley, director of exterior relations for the Nigerien armed forces. “We have a vast territory, and in that sense aircraft are fundamentally important.”
The presence of hi-tech Predator drones in Niger’s skies contrasts jarringly with life on the ground. There are only a handful of paved roads in the capital. Many people live in mud-brick shanties. Goats and camels are a common sight in the city centre.
US and Nigerien officials had worried that the drones might spur a popular backlash in Niger, where about 90 % of the population is Muslim. Extra security barriers were raised outside the US and French embassies as a precaution. So far, however, reaction has been muted, and many people seem to favour anything that the US and French militaries can do to prevent a spillover of violence from Mali.
“Of course, we might have some narrow-minded Nigeriens,” said Marou Amadou, who serves as justice minister and chief government spokesman. “But people understand that the presence of these drones is very, very helpful … What is happening in Mali could happen in Niger also.”
Nonetheless, US troops have kept a low profile. Americans with short haircuts and a military bearing occasionally surface at a couple of Niamey hotels to eat barbecue or drink beer, but most confine themselves to the base.
The Africa Command did not respond to questions about how many US troops are in Niger, but one US official said the number of air force personnel had increased beyond the 100 troops Obama said last month he had deployed.
“We just know there are drones; we don’t know what they are doing exactly,” said Djibril Abarchi, chairman of the Nigerien Association for the Defence of Human Rights, an independent watchdog group. “Nothing is visible. There is no transparency in our country with military questions. No one can tell you what’s going on.”
Most Nigeriens are strongly opposed to al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, the terrorist network’s affiliate, and recognise that their country is vulnerable without foreign military help, said Boureima Abdou Daouda, an imam in Niamey who leads a regional council of religious leaders that advises governments on countering extremism.
At the same time, as in many African countries, the presence of foreign troops is a sensitive issue given the history of colonialism in Niger. Daouda warned that the government could face trouble if it doesn’t shore up popular support and do a better job of publicly explaining why the American drones are necessary.
“Someone with bad intentions could say, ‘They are here to cause strife with Muslims’,” he said. “People might demonstrate. They might riot. Big flames begin with little flames.”
(This article appeared in the Guardian Weekly, which incorporates material from the Washington Post)