DIY inventors in Africa have developed innovative solutions to practical problems with old plastic containers.

Anyone working long hours outdoors knows the burden that a glaring sun can take on the body. In Africa, Dominic Wanjihia has proposed a flexible, wearable solar panel vest to harness this energy for productive purposes.

Despite the ubiquity of cellphones, most people in Africa still need to travel great distances each time they need to charge their battery, a fact of life for many living in remote Kenyan Villages, where an estimated 17.5 million people out of Kenya’s 38.5 million population own a mobile handset – up from 200,000 in 2000. And once they reach a charging location – typically shops that utilize a car battery or solar panel – charges can take up to an hour and cost around $2, which although a necessity, represents no small fee.
Having grown up in similar circumstances, two university students, Jeremiah [...]

Ghana-born artist El Anatsui’s works have been centered around the use of many different kinds of found materials which join together to form pieces that address topics such as consumerism, globalization, waste, and post-colonialism in Africa.

The metal fragments that act as the base of his sculptures: aluminum wrappings from the tops of bottles in local distilleries, rusty metal graters, used printing plates, are gathered locally in Nsukka, Nigeria, where Anatsui has called home for 28 years.
The National Museum for African Art site has a gallery of his works, along with his commentary on selected pieces. For more of an [...]

A few photos of street art in Africa have appeared on the web with the speculation that the pieces are the work of reknowned British artist Banksy. Some of the images have been painted in Mali and were painted “from Bamako to Timbuktu” says one commenter on Flickr.
It’s likely they are the work of the artist as PSFK found that they also appear on his website.
Banksy

The Nigerian film industry, a.k.a. Nollywood is the new subject of an exhibition at Sydney’s Australian Center for Photography.  Producing between five hundred to one thousand films a year, Nollywood is the third biggest film industry to date.  Despite often being ”low budget, violent and excessive”, Nollywood films outsell Hollywood films on the African market.
Working alongside well-known Nigerian actors, South-African photographer Pieter Hugo has recreated typical scenes that reflect the little-known-about Nollywood industry.
The exhibition runs from Friday 12 June to Saturday 11 July at 257 Oxford St, Paddington, Sydney
Related Post: Nollywood Babylon: Rise of the Nigerian Film Industry

June 12th through 20th, African Fashion International (AFI), organizers of the Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban Fashion Weeks, will be presenting ARISE Africa Fashion Week, which will be a showcase of the continent’s leading fashion designers. This event is of cultural importance because it’s the first time designers from all over Africa will be able to overcome ethnicity and cultural disparity to present a unified vision of African fashion for the new millennium. In addition to shining a light on emerging African fashion designers, the event will also help bring attention and revenue to the Continent’s evolving fashion industry.

Dr. Precious [...]

CNN has an interesting but quick story about an African brand that an American, Jeffrey Zarnow, is trying to grow worldwide. As part of that expansion he’s decided to keep all the production in Mauritius (rather than China), donate to African micro-finance charities and also distill the rum environmentally.

Magnus Larsson, a student at the Architectural Association in London, has devised an ambitious plan to create a 6,000km long sandstone wall across the Sahara Desert. The wall would provide refugee housing, and act as a barrier against the further spread of the desert. If that doesn’t sound fantastic enough, Larsson plans to create this wall by seeding the Sahara with bacillus pasteurii, a microorganism that solidifies loose sand into sandstone. The microorganism will act as a kind of huge, living 3D printer, manufacturing a new landscape over thousands of years.
[via BLDGBLOG]

“The Soccer Project” is the story of two soccer players who quit their 9-to-5 jobs and take off around the globe exploring the less glorified side of soccer: pick up games and impromptu contests.
In Bolivia, the duo plays with inmates in a prison courtyard; in Palestine, they play with a sixteen-year-old girl who defies tradition and plays on the streets with the local boys; and in Kenya, with moonshine brewers in the slums of Nairobi.  The team travels to over twenty countries and tells the stories of the people they meet through the game.  Below is a 15 minute [...]

A low tech approach to news broadcasting is working well for Alfred Sirleaf. He runs a a news and information service called the “Daily News” on the side of a major road in the middle of Monrovia, Liberia. The simple news display consists of a few large blackboards surrounded by some ad space. Sirleaf started the news service as a way to get important news and information into the hands of people who can not afford (or even understand) newspapers. He claims to have 10,000 daily viewers, and runs the whole operation through his cell phone, aided by a group [...]

Perhaps the biggest theme at this year’s Design Indaba in Cape Town was the use of improvised and recycled materials. Driftwood, plastic bottles, discarded packaging and elements of secondhand objects (amongst other items) found their way into the South African exhibition. It was also a global theme with several international speakers at the conference touching on the trend as a result of both recessionary times and a growing eco-conciousness.
The Design Indaba often felt like a meeting point between movements coming from two very different roots: one from the developed world’s angst about destroying the environment and the other being inspired [...]

Cape Town’s Design Indaba took place last week, a yearly event that includes a conference featuring some of the world’s leading thinkers in design with an exhibition championing South African products, furniture architecture and fashion (amongst other disciplines) attracting visitors from across the globe.
One of the interesting trends from the conference was the rise of objects with detailed narratives connected to them. Just as furniture and products are able to tell visual stories (e.g. wood carvings) modern designers are using digital tools to add a storytelling layer to physical objects. The movement runs in parallel with a broader trend of [...]

Self described “undercover photographer” JR has created a giant photo exhibit in Kiberia, Kenya. The photos taken of women from the slum cover 2000 feet of roof tops, as well as being wrapped around the local train service (which completes the image twice a day). The exhibit, which also doubles as a second roof for the shacks it covers, is part of the photographers 28 Millimetres project.

[via Wooster Collective]

The location of the world’s fastest growing film industry may surprise you. Behind only Hollywood in the U.S. and Bollywood in India, Nollywood in Nigeria has experienced a meteoric rise, now producing 2,500 movies a year, most for under $10,000. As a result the films are often slapdash affairs in true B-movie style, a mix of raw creativity and homemade ingenuity that generates finished work at a stunning rate. Their movies are notable for their reflection of Nigerian life, exploring many of the issues facing the country today- poverty, AIDS, corruption, women’s rights – with a distinct vision that brings to [...]