For the last four months, rolling blackouts have plagued Côte d'Ivoire. At first blamed upon power plants that needed maintenance and thus creating a shortage of power, it's become quite obvious and out in the open that power is being sold from Côte d'Ivoire to neighboring countries thus creating an artificial power shortage. People are assuming that this is in turn making some individuals quite wealthy while it completely ravages the economy and welfare of the Ivorian people.
Today, in Abengourou, the frustration finally realized itself in the form of a protest that turned in to a riot against the national electricity company. A huge number of more than 1,000 students gathered together to protest the cuts which are upwards of 12-16 hours a day. These electrical cuts in turn cut water service as well (water has been out for two days now) due to no backup systems for the water pumps. But with the cuts at night, the students in their final year of school have not been able to study for their end of year exams which are crucial to their being able to continue on in school. Here is a local student's take on what happened as he saw it. It's in French, but he talks quite openly about it.
This frustration played out in the streets as they eventually ended up hurling rocks at the offices of CIE, the Ivorian electricity company. They broke all the windows in the center of town office building and eventually had to be forced to disperse by the Ivorian military who shot tear gas in to the crowd and fired gunshots in the air. By the middle of the day the crowd was gone, leaving just the damage done to the CIE building and piles of rocks still in the streets that were slowly being removed as passing cars kicked them out of the way. Additionally, temporary blockades were erected on the rocks in and out of town by the students as they attempted to halt all traffic, but these too were quickly removed.
The anger is understandable. The power situation grows steadily worse, especially as it has been decided to allow the main city of Côte d'Ivoire, Abidjan, to avoid having any cuts whatsoever. While this is the most populous city with several million people, it is not where the money of the country is made. That is in the countryside where cacao and coffee is grown. These industries are in serious jeopardy as they are unable to produce their goods due to lack of power there while those in Abidjan are able to run their air conditioners all night long. The students in Abengourou are aware of all this and have grown so frustrated by the electrical and election situation that it's understandable this is how they took action when in reality, the local CIE has no control over there being power or not.
It appears that what started out as rumors this morning are actual truths this afternoon in that those of us living in Côte d'Ivoire are returning to the land of délestage. It's an interesting land full of darkness and no water due to the pumps also being cut. They claim that the water pumps will be spared in this go round, although I'm sure that's just in Abidjan where there actually exists separate power grids. For those of us in Podunk (ie, the rest of the country) we will most likely lose power to the pumps again.
I suppose that I can in general live with it, as long as it is managed better. Ideally, two four hour cuts per day would be a lot better than one eight hour as when sticking to four hours, your fridge will maintain cool, some water will stay in the pipes, and your mind will not start to go insane due to lack of fan in the heat of the day. But, that would entail work and the reason that there is this mess because any number of people aren't doing their work and actually planning these things to go smoother by sprinkling a dash of predictability as to when the rolling blackouts absolutely must happen.
If I sounds like I'm tired of it, then I sound correctly as it makes it very hard to get much work done when you're losing power all time. The Ivoirians are tired of it as well, given that this is the first year that it's been so bad and most likely a side effect to the currently deteriorating political situation. Elia wrote up a number of the things people said at a past town hall meeting during the previous blackouts and it's interesting to see that people really think through their arguments. If this had been the US, there just would have been a lot of screaming and drawing Hitler mustaches on photos of whomever people thought was in charge. In the end, nothing they said made a difference, but at the same time, neither does a Hitler mustache.
Anyways, off to fill up the water buckets again and make sure all my laptop batteries are charged
"Je suis low batt." In French, this literally means, "I am low battery." It doesn't make much sense on its own, but in the context of how Michaela Wrong talked about it in her book, "In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz" it is a phrase that she uses to sum up the great wealth of issues which plague the Congo. It harks back to when the first mobiles arrived in the country, which had a very annoying tendency to die after some 20 minutes of talking. Thus, the speaker would typically always have to tell the listener that they were out of battery and had to either switch phones or go charge. The term took on something of a life of its own and came to mean that something in general had run down.
We are at a point now here in Abengourou where the power cuts (or délestage if you will) have become regimented in that they're from 01:00 to 09:00 every day which coincides with no water during that time plus another 3-5 hours afterward as the system rebuilds pressure. Living life around this schedule is not what I would call choice, but it is doable, especially as you know that it's coming.
It just so happens that for the first time today, I heard of someone being asked how late he was out last night to which he replied, "Oh, we were out past-cut." meaning past 01:00. I'm sure that others are saying to make sure not flush the toilet until post-cut as well. As this way of life has become unfortunately ordinary (which is a shame as the resources do indeed exist) we have taken to incorporating it in to everyday language. No one probably even notices this, but happens all the time like when we say, "go Google it" when we mean to look something up online or "grab a Kleenex" when we mean a tissue.
I don't have the perception that people in Africa do this any more or any less than anywhere else in the world, but I find it more noticeable given that when it happens, it's usually a bending of pre-existing words or phrases, whereas in North America or Europe, it's the straight up adoption of a product name given the constant media and marketing blasts that permeate those societies a good deal more. Of course, many people here in Côte d'Ivoire keep insisting that the word for pen is "bic" instead of "stylo" or to grab a "Lotus" (a local brand) instead of a "mouchoir" so, I suppose the jury is out to some degree even still. We humans do enjoy our products; the power cuts, not so much.
In talking with a number of the UN folks here in Abengourou (who in turn have talked to other folks/officials in the area and beyond) a larger picture of what is happening with d'Off d'10 emerges.
As I mentioned earlier, there are some rather large problems with the Azito power station in Abidjan. This actually wasn't news as the station has been under repair for some time now. The repairs took awhile to get going, not because of any issues at a local level, but because this station is owned by a French company who appeared to be a bit lax in getting around to making the repairs. They are indeed underway now and if all goes well, the station should be back up to full potential by mid-March. This is an optimistic estimate, albeit one tinged with a degree of sensibility as even if this station is back up to full potential, there will still be cuts, but only in the neighborhood of four hours a day or so. Personally, I'm hoping that however they end up being, there is at least power through the night as sleeping fanless is funless.
But this power station wasn't the only electrical issue in all of this and the power cuts should have started some time back. It just so happened that there was an event you might have heard of called the African Cup of Nations which finished last week, crowning Egypt as the champions. Once over, the cuts happened. Coincidence? Not at all. For those in the US, it is probably difficult to understand that much as Eddie Izzard proclaimed, "Cake or Death!" it is "Football or Death!" for the rest of the world when it comes to watching the game. If Côte d'Ivoire blacked out during those matches, there would have been riots. People can drink warm beer a lot happier than watching no football, so given this disposition, the authorities realized that more power needed to appear as it wasn't coming from Azito. They turned to their minority power production that exists in the form of hydroelectricity. The dams were opened fuller than they should have been to run the turbines higher and generate more power. While this worked, it has severely reduced the banked supply of energy which is why once Azito comes back online, there still won't be enough power. All the cost of a Football Now, Sweat Later platform in government. So Populist...
Eventually, the rains will come to the far North of the country and the dams will be refilled to produce all the power that is needed. Unfortunately, this happens in May. Until then, it is what it is and the soft, purring sound of diesel generators shall be heard lulling many an Ivorian to sleep.
As a footnote very much worth mentioning, the elections that were supposed to happen for the last five years, but were truly and like, so totally going to happen last November, probably won't even happen in 2010 now. Some estimates even put them at March of 2011. The reason for this being that the president of the Election Commission was found fraudulently adding 429,000 people to the rolls that didn't exist. Naturally, it makes sense that this fellow was a member of the opposition, but this doesn't do too much for the cause of the opposition as he is now going to jail and large chunks if not all of the electoral process need to be restarted, delaying this election; which the process of having is much like distilling molasses in the middle of January, in Canada, by a couple of moose, who are holidaying in Cuba, watching the Cup of Nations, with full air conditioning through the night.
I was spoiled. Côte d'Ivoire seemed like a tropical vacation initially. Hot yes, but not insanely humid in the current season. A pleasant breeze washes across many places (especially Abidjan) in the evening and it is in general, quite pleasant. I'm here for work, but despite jetlag, I felt like I was on vacation for my first week here.
And then Tuesday hit. Without warning, in the middle of the night, the power went off and with it the water. The two systems are completely intertwined and it appears that there is no backup generator to keep the water pumping once the power stops and thus, the chateau d'eau drains quite fast leaving you in the dark and unable to wash, rinse, or flush.
Honestly, while it means stooping to heavy generalization, I should have known better. I've been to Kinshasa and the friend's place I stayed at, while having a lovely, 10th floor view of Brazzaville across the Congo River, was prone to water outages. They were prepared though and had what must have been a 500L reserve tank as high up as they could place it in the apartment to gravity feed when the water went off. Tuesday, I had no such setup and while there are buckets at my place, my wife and I had neglected to fill them. Dumb was us, but filled from henceforth they shall be.
It is an easy assumption to make that while in Côte d'Ivoire, things such as water and power wouldn't be a problem. The infrastructure is overall, very good. While something like 7,000 (presumably small) villages aren't electrified, all the main cities are properly wired and the grid, at normal times functions quite well. There is also stable internet--at home I might add. The roads are good. The Abidjan airport is very modern and even tops Kotoka in neighboring Ghana. And yes, the railroad, while only for cargo, still functions well. You would never know that the country is technically a divided one, emerged from a civil war less than a decade ago, and has the telltale white SUVs of the UN Mission flitting about the countryside.
Apparently, Côte d'Ivoire has the ability to generate 0.89 gigawatts of power. Not bad, but if they were to make full usage of all the hydroelectric power available, then they would have 2 gigawatts at the ready. The issue is that currently, they're not and on top of that, there is a large degree of electricity being exported to Ghana, Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin, and Togo. You can draw your own conclusions as to why this might be when there is currently a 150 megawatt deficit in the country. Naturally, it rubs me the wrong way, having lived in California during the rolling blockouts there that ended up costing the state billions of dollars in corruption waste to companies such as the now defunct Enron. This is on a smaller scale monetarily, but still the same thing.
But, what specifically happened Tuesday?
...a failure occurred on a group of central heat [no idea what this means in French] Azito. "We will be without this group until May. During this period, the country will experience a shortfall in electricity production of about 150 megawatts. So there will be disruption on the network…"
Azito is a gas-powered station in the suburbs of Abidjan. I am unclear as to what "la centrale thermique" is, but whatever the case, it isn't functioning and thus, because of this, there isn't enough electricity. The weird part in all of this is apparently a third turbine is being readied at this station, but they are waiting until demand is high enough to use it. It would seem that domestic demand is not only high enough, but due to it growing at 10% a year; it has exceeded any possible supply that is currently available. I can only figure that they must mean that they're waiting for international demand to be great enough to get this going, since that appears to be who they cater to.
I've no idea how all this plays out, but it appears that it should all get straightened out just about the same time I'm scheduled to leave the country, which seems fitting, given that I'm to blame for the troubles in the first place. It the meanwhile, I just hope that they somewhat stick to the blackout schedule and I remember to keep buckets and jerry cans full.
Until Our Independence also has a take on the situation as well.
Around five months ago, some people came together to create a messenger-style bag for the masses. Beyond just being a bag, it was to be designed with solar panels, a battery and all the circuitry to make it possible to have light at night and charge other items such as a mobile phones. Thus FLAP was born which stands for Flexible Light And Power.
Several groups have come together to make this project happen. The first is Portable Light who work to bring light and energy to people in developing nations in a sustainable and affordable manner. The second is Pop!Tech who put on a conference event each year in Massachusetts revolving around technology. The third is Timbuk2 who are based where I currently live in San Francisco and are most famous for being the makers of messenger bags as well as luggage. Lastly, there is Erik Hersman and AfriGadget. Erik was given a number of prototype bags which he took with him on his most recent trip around Africa. You can read the country specific coverage about the FLAPs here.
Erik was brought in to the fold early on because he has lived and traveled a good portion of his life in Africa. He knows the African tech scene there, covers it very well, and has great contacts. Naturally he was a great fit to show the bags to Africans and have them pick apart the good and the bad of this future product.
It was in Ghana at Maker Faire Africa where I actually saw this analysis in action. Erik had been running around Accra showing the bags to mechanics and tailors as well as some electrical engineers. While I had seen a mention of the bag on AfriGadget, it hadn't really sunk in how the whole project was shaping up. Once I saw it in person, I was intrigued.
While we at Maneno aren't able to travel around Africa as much as Erik right now, it just happened that Elia was heading own to Highway Africa where she is right now. The technology and production side of the bags had been covered very well with Erik's travels, so why not get the opinion of 700 African journalists who are at the conference? They are people who are quite mobile and depend on having their phones powered everywhere they go. After some a trip to Timbuk2 and a tutorial, Elia and a new bag were off to South Africa.
I have to say that I'm a rather large fan of Timbuk2. I think I have four or so of their bags which serve various purposes. They're extremely well designed bags for running around and my main one has been to three continents over four years and still looks pretty much brand new (seen here in Belgrade, Serbia.)
But here's the thing, these FLAP bags are not your typical Timbuk2 bag.
As you can see in the above image the flap where the solar panels are is actual detachable and can be swapped out for a non-solar flap. If you can see it in that shot, the bag is a different shape than a standard Timbuk2 messenger bag as well without the flared bottom.
The bags are outfitted with a large dose of circuitry. In the above shot you can see the board that houses the power processor as well as the battery. AfriGadget has it from the other side. The large red button is for turning the LED for the lantern portion on and off.
And that is the lantern portion. This is the reason that the flap detaches so that you can hang it from something in order to have a proper light to work or read by at night.
And these folks are Jordan and Lizzy who helped us get up to speed on the bag and gave us a tour around the factory in the Mission District of San Francisco which admittedly looks a great deal different than when seeing it during their 20th anniversary party.
So keep in mind that I am not the target market for this bag. In fact initially, no one in the US or Europe is seen as the target market. It's being designed for people where electricity and light are an issue. This struck me as a bit strange. Given the large green movements in both these regions, I would think that there would be any number of people who would be happy to have the ability to charge their phone or whatever else on-the-go. Also, the light option is something that could be quite handy during camping or again, if you wanted to be green and use a light at night that was charged by the sun. I suppose we'll see where things go with this, but given the fact that all the electronics are currently made in the US, I would gladly buy one of these if they kept this up because I am a big fan of buying locally. Of course this premium apparently makes the cost production $60 more and they're looking to produce the electronics in Asia eventually in order to get to the target price of $30 or so.
Otherwise, the bag is impressive in how simple it is. I would suggest making it even simpler though. Getting rid of the other flap and permanently attaching the solar flap to the bag would go a long way to reduce cost as well as the complication of pulling the lantern out and setting it up for use, which is a lot of steps. I would say that having a way to stand up the reflective portion of the flap up and setting it somewhere would be a lot more convenient.
The solar panels are quite cool. As you might notice when looking at the AfriGadget bags versus the one we got, there are two panels instead of the one in order to produce more power. You would think that this adds to the stiffness and overall inflexibility to the bag, but it doesn't. The panels bend a great deal and are able to curve with the bag quite well.
As for the electronics, I'm not sure if it's a matter of how this prototype was put up (they are still working on heavy design iterations for these) but the board was very tricky to get in and out of the pouch. It would be nice to see that easier to work with as I'm sure replacing the board or the battery somewhere along the course of ownership will happen.
Also as it currently sits, you can only use the USB charging port if you have the bag in the sun and are powering the panels. This is done to maintain the battery so that there is power for the LED light at night. While this is okay, I don't feel that it's ideal because if an owner of the bag wants to drain the battery to power their mobile then that's their business. In fact, a lot of mobiles already have a light built in to them so people end up using that as a "lantern" at night. This is just me talking though. I'm not sure how this plays out for those who don't have light at night.
I think the only thing that really, really is a big problem currently is bag closure. All of my other Timbuk2 bags have a set of velcro straps as well as buckles on the flap allowing you to really latch it down. This prototype had neither and while the solar panels bend, they still are somewhat rigid and so the flap would stick straight out, begging any would be thieves to have a look at the contents making charging a mobile phone in there a non-issue as you won't have it anymore. The workaround for now was to use a carabiner to snap two loops together on the flap and the body. Seems to have done the trick.
It's going to be interesting to see where this project goes and I was happy to get a glimpse of it at this stage. I believe it will also be making an appearance at Pop!Tech as well in a more finished form. Also, keep an eye on AfriGadget as well as Elia's blog to read more updates and super cool African redesigns of the bag like these.
It's one of those issues when you're traveling around countries in Sub-Saharan Africa that in addition to limited internet, you often have limited power. If you're in a big capital city, things will most likely be fine, but step out of those boundaries and these two cornerstones to connectivity generally fade away. This is naturally the reason that mobiles have taken off since getting a week of standby and several hours of talk time out of a mobile is a helluva lot better than the meager three hours you get on a laptop.
Yesterday, White African tipped me off to this article that covers some of the recent innovations when it comes to melding mobiles with solar power. I suppose it's one of the more likely ways for the devices to go now that cameras seem to be ubiquitous. And given that the iPhone battery life is squalid, tossing on a couple of solar panels to the back of that phone would be "green" and very cool way to go.
Of course, solar panels on the back of a phone can't really power the phone. In fact, to get close to powering via the sun, you need something like this setup, which still only delays the inevitable and doesn't allow a one to one connection of power and drain. What gives?
Obviously, our battery technology is pretty bad. The fact that we're essentially using the same, 200 year-old design with some modern materials to make them a bit better is pretty sad. Undoubtedly this will get better as the need for "real storage" becomes greater in the coming years of more powerful hybrid cars.
When it comes to solar cells though, we are advancing a bit faster on this technology that has been around for about 50 years. Of course, one would think we'd be a bit further along given that advances in solar efficiency run parallel to advances in silicon chip production which the later of keeps getting faster and faster. Obviously it's all due to the fact that those generating solar cells are flush with power, while those who could really use it (ie Africa where sun is in pretty large supply) are lacking in power. Not really much new here, except for the fact that all of the nations that had a great deal of power and now finding there to be less of it as everyone wants more of it. We can only hope that this translates in to advances which will indeed make it so that you can have a mobile that will have only the smallest of battery on it just to keep it on through the night when it is not powering itself during the day.
Those designs at geek.com are a step in the right direction and while I'll never buy one, I do hope that Apple gets on board having a solar iPhone. Not only would it be wicked cool, but it would drive a copycat market. After all, I really don't need a crappy, 1.3 megapixel camera on my mobile, but I do need my mobile to have enough power to use it.
