Maker Faire Africa
Project Outline
The first Maker Faire Africa (MFA) took place on the 13-15 August 2009. The MFA aims to bring together African inventors and innovators in the same way that Maker Faire happens in the US and UK (www.makerfaire.com).
As part of the Micro Maker Faire Wales, Henry Barnor from Maker Faire Africa will demonstrate the type of technologies that are currently relevant to Africa. Demos will include Afrobotics robots that participants built in Ghana earlier this year using Lego`s Technics (www.active-robots.com), and buglabs, a modular open-source hardware unit (www.buglabs.net).
Mobile phones are the predominent technology in Africa and Henry will demonstrate a number of projects that utilise mobile phone technology: a cell-phone registration system that was hacked together for MFA; and the txt4health system. There`ll also be pictures and videos from MFA 2009 on display.
Biography
Henry Barnor is a Ghanaian software engineer based in San Jose, California. He is the technical lead and co-founder of the GhanaThink Foundation (http://www.ghanathink.org)an africa-focused think tank.
In addition, he is a co-organiser for Maker Faire Africa and co-founder of afrobotics(http://www.afrobotics.com). Henry led a team of volunteers to organise Ghana`s first barcamp and continues to be instrumental in subsequent barcamps in the diaspora. He is also a practitioner who hacks mobile phones and builds robots.
Related Links
Maker Faire AfricaHenry Barnor
Ghana Think
Image 1: Maker Faire Africa Maker Faire Africa Mobile Phone, created by Henry Barnor and Henry Addo. Image courtesy of Maker Faire Africa
Image 2: Maker Faire Africa Robot, Maker Faire Africa 2009. Image courtesy of Erik Hershman