It’s a $5 cooker that uses two cardboard boxes – one inside another – and an acrylic cover to trap the sun’s power for boiling and cooking.  The design is simple enough that it can be produced in existing cardboard factories in Africa.  In fact, a Nairobi, Kenya factory has been set up to manufacture 2.5 million boxes a month.

Kyoto Box would allow villagers to cook without firewood and fossil fuel, which would lead to a significant reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.  Another added benefit… reduced indoor smoke inhalation – a major health threat in much of the developing world.

In winning the challenge, Kyoto Energy, which makes the Kyoto Box, will receive $75,000.

Links:
Solar-powered cardboard cooker (Financial Times)

The dehydrator would effectively and efficiently dehydrate a product within a few days, while also condensing the moisture out of the air for use by the cultivators as drinking water. It will have expandable capacity to grow with the increase of their businesses, yet low cost to the consumer. As of now, water is becoming increasingly scarce for many populations on this planet.

By creating this product, we could provide those struggling individuals with vital water supplies that they would otherwise go without.

Another benefit afforded by the creation of this device allows for the ability of farmers to stimulate the economy by preserving what would become wasted crop and then selling it. For example, a farmer who grows tomatoes to sell at market would benefit in that he could dry his produce and sell it at a premium in the form of sun-dried tomatoes.

Although the focus remains intent on benefiting the local farmer, it has shifted to provide greater focus on those farmers living in the more arid regions of the world, specifically those of sub-Saharan Africa. It is in these regions that we believe our product would be most useful since it would provide farmers with much needed water and much needed money through the creation of gourmet-type food items.

Goals:

• Design, create and test prototypes
• Create final product that yields potable water
• Secure funding to buy raw materials and components
• Successfully make the product into a consumer good that can be sold in sub-Saharan Africa and other arid environments

I won the grand-prize for a contest sponsored by Sealed Air Corporation for creating this, and have been to Africa twice to implement it with my parent’s prosthetic limb outreach, Standing With Hope.

There are a lot of amputees around the world, and I would like to reach more of them with this invention.

I plan to return to Ghana in the summer, and we are looking to go to China and possibly North Africa.

Me forming a leg covering with Bubblewrap Last Summer (Ghana, West Africa

This invention could help and could even enable other inventions to work better. For example, the One Laptop Per Child project is supposed to bring education to underprivileged areas in Africa. However, the laptop is charged by a wall outlet. This stops people living without electricity from having access to the free laptops.

Electricity could bring small villages other benefits. My miniature solar powered outlet station could even help combat diseases like malaria by enabling electrically powered mosquito eliminators.

The best part about this invention is that it is easy to produce and could provide power to a village for under $100. It has a 12V solar panel sitting on top of a weatherproof box. It is wired to a solar controller, which keeps the battery from overloading. This controller is, in turn wired to the battery. The battery is a 12V battery, like in a car. The battery then provides 12V to the transformer, which outputs 120V for the outlets. This can all be seen in the photo of my prototype.

I haven't made a prototype yet, but I made a schematic of the wiring. All of this will be closed in a weather proof box.

Link: www.africagadget.com