AMT Rendez-vous #17 WOELAB

What: AMT Rendez-vous #17
What: WOELAB [Togo]
When: Wednesday 28th of October 3:30pm
Where: Parsons Paris room 500
Who: Woelab

WoeLab is the only Maker Space in Togo, which makes possible to pool resources and mix diverse populations advocating and adopting uses low environmental footprint.

They have developed the first truly local fablab; incubator / accelerator to impulse both technology open hardware projects, innovative micro-enterprises and international approaches digital solidarity. A framework for single emulation, where young Africans through collective intelligence and free mentoring, access to the status of inventors, project managers and business leader. Shared innovation space.

Sénamé Koffi and his team of architects & engineers from Lomé, Togo. After buying a 3D printer for their new makerspace WoeLab, they looked around and realized they already had the parts to build their next 3D printing machine.

Using the frame of an old desktop computer, iron rails from discarded printers, and one new Arduino board, WoeLab member Afate Gnikou invented the W.Afate 3D printer—which won First Place in the Fab Awards.

“With an old thing and a good idea,” says Honou, “you can make a solution.”

Every year, 515 tons of broken gadgets get shipped to West Africa, where young workers burn the equipment to salvage materials like gold and copper in a dangerously toxic environment. But there’s a lot of craft and engineering that goes into electronic components, all of which is wasted when things gets melted down for scrap. WoeLab manager Dodji Honou says the members of WoeLab asked themselves, “how can we create something of our own using what we have around us?”