What we are looking for in a Partner: Home-made wooden bicycles, hand dug wells, child-proof charcoal cook stoves, sponge numbers and letters of the alphabet cut from old discarded flip-flop sandals and used by teachers as didactic tools. Those are some of the many creative solutions we have seen in operation in rural village settings. Such ideas are desperately needed to help solve problems faced by millions of East Africans. However, these ideas can be patronizing and irrelevant to the daily life of a growing number of Africans who have college degrees and live in urban areas where telephones and electricity are the norm.
For urban Africans it could be a non-profit Internet cafe with community connectivity as its main goal; a single computer and a digital video camera producing local language videos on community issues. What is appropriate technology? What is sustainable technology? Those are issues that garner polarized opinions from varied schools of development. We are challenging African minds to hit us with their creative best, be it high-tech, low-tech or no-tech. We are challenging them to think about not only how the two worlds collide, but how they might compliment one another.
