Archive

Hope you’re doing well.

The last few weeks have been very busy! I’ve been running a Kickstarter campaign for one of my products, helping the winning team complete the Welcome To Nigeria Challenge, and moving apartments. Here’s to a more relaxing February.

In case you missed it, here’s last month’s newsletter.

Q&A with Jessica Nguema, Project Lead for the make project at the Internet of Production Alliance

Happy New Year! Hope you’re doing well.

A new year is a great opportunity to sell Hardware Things a little bit, so if you enjoy the newsletter I’d like to invite you to join as a member! Members support the newsletter operations and receive a physical copy of the zine delivered to them each year. Become a member today.

In case you missed it, here’s last month’s newsletter. Also, here are the most clicked links from last year

First Things First

Hi there! Hope you’re doing well.

I’m breaking protocol and sending an email mid-month, but with good reason. Tomorrow at 4.30pm GMT, we’ll be hosting Latiff Cherono at our monthly Community Chat.

He is a manufacturing systems engineer and lean manufacturing expert. He is currently the Electronics Manufacturing Manager of Gearbox Europlacer, a subsidiary of Gearbox for manufacturing Printed Circuit Boards in Kenya. Recently, they began manufacturing Raspberry Pis for the African market - a big milestone for large scale electronics manufacturing on the continent.

Latiff will share his expertise setting up a PCB manufacturing outfit and take us on a virtual walkthrough of the Gearbox Europlacer space. I think it would be worth your while.

Hope you’re doing well.

I haven’t done a good job of promoting the monthly Community Chat. Every month on the third Thursday, I invite someone working on hardware on the continent to share their work on the Hardware Things Discord Server. This year alone we’ve had talks ranging from IOT-enabled beekeeping to sensors for tracking wildlife.

I’d like to invite you to join the Discord Server where we hold these talks (and more side conversations). Also, if you’re looking for an environment to share your work and receive thoughtful, relevant feedback from other engineers here’s the right place. Just send me an email and I’ll take it from there!

In case you missed it, here’s last month’s newsletter.

Hope you’re doing well.

Over the next few days, I’ll be migrating hardwarethings.org to its new home. There might be some glitches so bear with me.

Also, I’m looking for teams and people who developed hardware tools and products in response to the COVID-19 pandemic across the continent. If you did or know someone who did, please let me know by simply responding to this email.

Have a good month!

Hope you’re doing well.

After writing The Prize Economy last year, I meant to write a follow-up piece focusing on venture capital firms on the continent who have an explicit hardware focus. It didn’t pan out the way I envisioned but I got a great interview with Nick Allen who’s the Founder of Savant, a South African venture capital firm who invests in hardware and life science startups. For today’s letter, I thought I would share that with you.

In case you missed it, here’s last month’s newsletter.

Q&A with Nick Allen

Hope you’re doing well.

At the beginning of every year, when I start planning the zine, I have a very faint idea of what is going to be in it. I commission pieces, interview people, chase down the drafts from the contributors, but never really see the complete picture until I write the editorial. In this year’s issue, I get to it in about 500 words but here’s even less: hardware startups that are able to navigate supply chain inefficiencies become delay-proof and that’s a really good thing.

No Tracking, a zine by Hardware Things, is available now.

In case you missed it, here’s last month’s newsletter.

Hope you’re doing well.

As you may have noticed, there was no newsletter last month. I was dealing with COVID, my first time, and was going through a tough patch so couldn’t get to finishing the draft. Thanks to everyone who checked in!

Since the last issue, Super Display won the Welcome To Nigeria Challenge.

In case you missed it, here’s June’s newsletter.

Hope you’re doing well.

After months of work by the teams, I’d like to invite you to the Finals Ceremony of the Welcome To Nigeria Challenge holding tomorrow at 1pm West African Time. You’ll hear the teams present their designs and find out who wins!

In case you missed it, here’s last month’s newsletter.

First Things First

Hope you’re doing well.

This month’s letter is a week late due to some personal circumstances, my apologies for that.

I’m happy to share that the Welcome to Nigeria Challenge is in it’s last stage with the participants submitting their design concepts, you can check out their designs on YouTube.

In case you missed it, here’s last month’s newsletter.

Hope you’re doing well.

While I’ve been a part of design competitions, The Welcome To Nigeria Challenge is the first time I’ve had to run one. Last week, we selected nine participants (in three teams) who will submit detailed designs in the next four weeks. To guide them along this relatively quick process, I’ve had to think about the design methods that help me the most - requirement docs, morphological charts etc - and I thought to ask: what’s in your design toolbox? I’d love to know.

In case you missed it, here’s last month’s newsletter.

Things I Enjoyed Reading

Hope you’re doing well.

A couple of months ago, I tweaked the structure of the newsletter to have a Q&A with an entrepreneur. I received some positive feedback about that and made a note to try that a few times a year. Today’s newsletter is like that where I’ll be writing about an engineer and entrepreneur in Burkina Faso who’s been developing interesting technologies for food production for more than 20 years.

In case you missed it, here’s last month’s newsletter.

Improving family farming production with farming tools

Hope you’re doing well.

A few months ago, Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún, a Nigerian linguist who’s done some NLP work with Google, tweeted about landing in Lagos and seeing the ‘Welcome to Nigeria’ sign only in English — a limited choice for a country with more than a hundred languages and dialects. It raised a lot of chatter on Twitter, most of it quite negative. I have walked past that sign a few times myself but never really thought about it.

After a few emails and weekend Zoom calls, I’m happy to announce The Welcome to Nigeria Challenge, presented by TechCircle and supported by Hardware Things, Yoruba Names, and Stampar 3D. The competition is to build a welcome sign that will feature every Nigerian language, with the capacity for multiple interfaces (like voice) and make the design open source. Registration closes on February 28, with $2500 in prizes.

In case you missed it, here’s last month’s newsletter.

Hope you’re doing well.

It’s a new year, and I’ve got a few plans for Hardware Things that should be interesting. I shared a letter with with members earlier, which you can read to see my thought process a little bit. I’m committed to exploring topics related to hardware product development on the African continent with Hardware Things, and that takes quite the effort.

To support this work, I invite you to become a member of Hardware Things this year! It’s $5 a month or $55 a year, and it largely goes to paying contributors and hosting fees. If you sign up in January, you get last year’s zine shipped to you as a bonus (until stock lasts).

In case you missed it, here’s last month’s newsletter.

Hope you're doing well.

This month I thought to do something a little different with the newsletter. Instead of the usual headings, I will share the experience of a hardware entrepreneur in Senegal and Cameroon. I like to keep tabs on people building hardware across the continent, learning from their moves and clapping at their wins. Like most startups, their experiences do not always end up successfully.

In case you missed it, here’s last month’s newsletter.

Shop management devices for the informal sector

Hope you're well.

I've become very interested in the construction and design of African musical instruments since watching the video of the Mbira doodle from Google. So if you have any resources or know a practitioner who produces such instruments, I'd love to hear it!

Hope you're well.

Nick Allen runs Savant in Cape Town, it's an incubator and venture fund that's focused on hardware. Of course, I was interested in learning about his experiences running the outfit. When we spoke last month, he mentioned something that's stayed in my head.

He advises startups who build hardware to build, prove and go offshore (outside the continent) with their technology as soon as possible. The reason: the market for hardware products is too small within the continent. The flip side of that, of course, is that in many respects the state of tech in Africa is behind the rest of the world.

Hope you're doing well.

In the editorial for Outside Influence, I mention an excerpt from my interview with Olugbenga Olubanjo who develops battery 'capsules' that are rented on a daily basis in Lagos. He spoke about the gaps that solar home systems have for lower income consumers and how these exist because the manufacturing decisions for these products are largely made outside of the places where they are used. I think that's changing slowly and the zine tries to show how. It's available today and members are receiving their physical copies at the moment, make sure you get a copy!

Hope you’re doing well.

To understand how subscribers consume the newsletter, I’ve kept track of the most clicked links from the last 12 months. It’s shown me that people like the links that have featured in the Interesting Things and sections more than the others, which was a little surprising to learn.

Hello, I’m David.

I’m a satellite technology and space industry analyst focused on the fast-growing African space industry. That involves fun things like keeping track of rocket launches (like this one by the DSI and the University of Kwazulu-Natal) and more rigorous work like writing industry reports.

Hope you’re doing well.

If you’ve missed travelling due to the pandemic as much as I have, here’s something I think you will love: Drive & Listen.

Hope you’re well.

For the last few months, I’ve been having monthly calls with newsletter subscribers about what they’re building and their thoughts on hardware on the continent. If this sounds like you, join us!

Hope you’re well.

I’ve been absorbed the last few months working on a simple timer that is built around my thinking on habit building, it’s about 75% done and now I’m looking to learn more from others about their productivity methods of choice. Would love to hear from you.

Hope you’re doing well.

Today is three years since I started writing this newsletter, and in thinking about the time since I would love to learn what you look forward to reading in these letters. So, please reply. I’m looking forward to reading from you.

In case you missed it, here’s .

Hope you’re doing well. I’ve done my best to write this newsletter without mentioning COVID-19 so far, but today’s letter broke that bet. Hope you enjoy it!

In case you missed it, here’s last month’s newsletter.

Hello there,

Happy new year! Hope you’re taking some time to relax.

In the spirit of new year resolutions, I would like to invite you to support Hardware Things as a member. Every last quarter of the year, you will receive the Hardware Things shipped to your address - among other perks!

Hello there.

I hope you enjoyed reading the last two letters from Somto and Wamboga. I’m looking forward to inviting more guests to write the letter.

I learnt a lot editing this and it’s always a pleasure having a guest on. Hope you enjoy it - Chuma.

Hello,

I’m Wamboga, a technology analyst based in Nairobi, Kenya.

I love the opportunity to invite guests to write the newsletter, it takes on a different life of its own. Hope you enjoy this - Chuma.

Hello, I’m Somto.

Hello there.

Hope you’re doing very well.

Something I’ve been thinking about

Hello there.

Hope you’re doing very well.

Something that’s been on my mind

Hello there.

It’s good to be back.

There are a number of new subscribers, thanks for joining! This newsletter is primarily to share interesting links from the hardware product development space in Africa. Occasionally, I veer off on tangents - please forgive me in advance.

Hello there,

I’m betting that you need a break from curve flattening, and disinfectants, and Twitter, and Slack, and Zoom, and asking if people can see your screen, so let me tell you what I’ve been reading recently.

I’ve been reading a whole lot about tomatoes, particularly how they are transported from the North to the South of Nigeria. You see, tomatoes are quite subject to decay, only staying good for a couple of days outside of cold chain storage. As many transporters can not afford that they take a huge loss from the amount that is loaded unto the trailers to the amount that gets delivered to markets in the South.

If you’re unfamiliar with the geography, the Northern parts of Nigeria tend to grow crops like tomatoes in huge quantities and ship them to markets in the South - using routes quite like that in the figure below.

Happy New Year!

I’m taking a break from Hardware Things, so this letter will be the last for a while. I think breaks are good for re-calibrating your energy and I hope to be back quite soon.

I’m grateful to all of you, especially those who have been subscribers since May 2017 and to the patrons who’ve supported this work.

Hello there,

Hope you had a great November. The regular newsletter is back.

Hardware Things is supported by readers like you, .

Hello there,

Today’s newsletter is going to be a long one.

As well as this monthly newsletter, I write a profile on a hardware company on the continent doing some interesting work. Now typically, that profile is only accessible to patrons who support the newsletter.

When writing this month’s letter, I thought it would be great to show non-patrons what you’re missing. I hope you enjoy it and consider supporting the newsletter.

Hello there,

It’s the best month of the year, and not just because it’s the manufacturing or the open hardware month.

Hardware Things is supported by readers like you, .

Hello!

This month’s letter is slightly leaner and has a spotlight on a cold chain solution. Happy reading!

Hardware Things is supported by some lovely patrons who get some extra in-depth stories, .

Hello there!

All over the world, communities enable entrepreneurs to develop products and services. Hardware communities tend to be more difficult to set up, and only a few get any recognition for the work they enable.

In today’s letter, I find some interesting communities that are not in the news a lot but are doing some amazing work.

Also, happy August!

Hello there,

Happy July! Or Monday, as the case may be.

Hardware Things is supported by readers like you, .

Hello there,

I hope you had a great May. This month’s letter has a lot of long paragraphs, please accept my sincerest apologies.

Hardware Things is supported by readers like you, .

Hello there,

Hope you had a good month.

You may have noticed that the link under the Company Spotlight section goes to a protected post in the last few newsletters. It goes to a 650-word profile of the same company written by me and available to newsletter patrons. I think you might like the content.

Hello there,

Before I get into it, I’ve been enjoying a couple of new-ish podcasts that I think are pretty great: Minor Details, by two industrial designers talking about the trade, and The Edge, by Bantam Tools.

Hello there,

There are two ways to look at things: as they are, as Kai Löffelbein examines the disposal of e-waste in Agboloshie, Ghana; or as they could be, like the Agboloshie Makerspace Platform builds spacecrafts from the same e-waste.

Hello there,

Some numbers caught my attention last month. Due to that, today’s letter pays more attention to data than most letters.

Nigerians in diaspora remitted over $25 billion back to the country last year alone; in comparison, the country in foreign aid. The same can be seen for other countries on the continent. While most of the remitted funds, in my opinion, would have been to support friends and family, those funds could easily become venture capital or impact investments in the near future.

Hello there and happy new year!

If you’re reading this, you’re taking time out of your holiday to do so. I’d like to thank you for that and hope you’re having a fun time. Today’s letter is short and sweet.

There are many stories that don’t make it to the newsletters because only a few can. Thankfully, December was a slow month so the stories in today’s letter are some of the best that couldn’t make previous letters.

Hello there,

It’s December, I hope the year has been a good one for you. Today’s letter is a little longer than usual but I promise that it’s worth it.

There’s been extensive research on healthcare product design on the continent, many of which have highlighted the absence of local context in technology designed overseas. This is not to say there aren’t companies operating abroad designing great technology for the continent, like Sisu Global or Ligand Innovation.

Hello again,

This month’s newsletter has a little bit of everything.

Hope you have a great month.

Hello there,

I’ve been a Nadya Peek groupie for years and I finally got around to reading her thesis last month. But what really caught my attention was something she said at a lecture in Stanford ‘when software developers have issues with using a tool, they can easily make another one using the same skills’.

Hello there,

The First Mile, Last Mile problem describes a major issue in transportation systems: the difficulty in getting from home to a station and from the last station to your destination.

While this problem originates from industries like telecommunications and supply chain, it presents itself in other industries, like commercial IOT (last mile) and food processing (first mile). Today’s newsletter is my attempt to cover interesting things in these spaces.