Posts Tagged: gikomba
The story of the jiko
Jikos, Swahili for cook stoves, are used in just about every household in Kenya. Traditionally, they use large quantities of firewood and heavily pollute indoor environments. Luckily, the jiko also happens to be one of the biggest success stories in Kenyan appropriate technology. Dr. Maxwell Kinyanjui, Founder of Musaki Enterprises, invented an energy-saving stove called the Kenyan Ceramic Jiko (KCJ) in 1982. The idea was to change the shape slightly and add a clay insert to the scrap steel housing to insulate the jiko and use less firewood. Great design, true, but so many great appropriate technologies have been developed and rusted. Here’s what was so brilliant about the Kenyan Ceramic Jiko:
- It was a very simple switch from the traditional metal jiko (see photo, back) to the clay insert (front)
- Kinyanjui educated artisans on production of the housing and community groups on the ceramic insert
- Kinyanjui also educated consumers on the cost savings that would accrue over time from reduced energy
Gikomba revisited
The verdict is in: Gikomba is the center of the jua kali universe. Almost every informal sector product has roots in Gikomba—the design, the materials, the tools, the inner frame, or the finished product itself. In sofa production, according to Lilac Osanjo, the frames of all jua kali sofa beds, from rural roadsides to formal furniture shops, originate in Gikomba. The area churns out 1,400 sofa frames per day! Even more interesting, nearly all design decisions, says Osanjo, are made by the time the frame is complete. Of the 33 sofa making enterprises in Gikomba (disaggregated into many specialized shops with 1,400 workers), only five are said to determine new designs, largely by copying furniture from Nakumatt or European catalogs.
Following Lilac’s presentation, a debate arose among the audience on whether Gikomba was a “nightmare” or a “thriving organism.” No doubt it is the latter, but just try doing research there. I dare you.
Nairobi Industrial Area: Materials
Part of a four-part series on Gikomba: Intro Products Tools Materials
Essential to the Industrial Area’s thriving activity, and indeed a critical differentiator from rural jua kali, is an equally thriving materials infrastructure. To sustain the manufacturing of so many diverse products, a separate industry has emerged for raw materials, both recycled and new.
One of the first things you see as you enter the area, a mountain of oil drums left over from local factories. Middlemen regularly deliver waste and scrap, as well as new materials, directly from factories.
Nairobi Industrial Area: Tools
Part of a four-part series on Gikomba: Intro Products Tools Materials
To build their sometimes intricate products, jua kali use a range of tools, from blunt edges to complex machinery. Many of the tools are impressively manufactured by jua kali themselves. In areas with power, welding equipment and power carpentry tools are hugely important.
What we might think of as esoteric building materials, I-beams are an essential component to the jua kali toolkit, used as an edge for bending.
Nairobi Industrial Area: Products
Part of a four-part series on Gikomba: Intro Products Tools Materials
The products sold in the Industrial Area seem at first to vary widely. In fact, dramatically so when compared to the rural jua kali, who are perpetually stuck on doors and windows. Eventually, you begin to see quite a bit of repetition, and while the diversity of products may be somewhat greater than it was 20 years ago (though not much), it is clear that even jua kali here are still stuck in a pattern of making what everyone else is making.
Our guides specialize in trunks of all sizes, down to tin school bags. It is striking how similar the designs of products like these are to their formally manufactured counterparts, sold at the local Nakumatt supermarket. The jua kali haven’t necessarily gotten creative with the design itself, but very much so in terms of replication. They improvise until the fabrication process becomes efficient and scalable.
Customers have come to know jua kali as a low-cost alternative to formal markets with a very similar product selection. Perhaps this expectation is one of the many factors preventing jua kali from developing unique designs.
Nairobi Industrial Area
Part of a four-part series on Gikomba: Intro Products Tools Materials
As soon as I stepped foot in Nairobi’s Industrial Area, which encompasses three of the most dynamic concentrations of informal sector activity in the world (Gikomba, Kamukunji, and Burmah Market), a stupid grin emerged on my face. I knew this was exactly what I came to Kenya for. The area is the heart of the country’s jua kali (“hot sun”) industry of informal artisans and feels (and indeed functions) like its own world. It is an impressive world that has emerged gradually from the grass roots over the last half a century, filling gaps in the formal sector in terms of employment and manufacturing. It remains dynamic and uniquely Kenyan to this day.
As you roll up to the Industrial Area outskirts, you first come across stands selling clothing sent from abroad, some of which bear the names of losing championship teams (for every major sporting event, enough shirts are printed for both outcomes). Deliverymen pass by with new and scrap materials from local factories.
Analogue Digital explores how human systems interact with digital ones: how interfaces affect our relationship with the world, how craft culture and modern technology are colliding in unprecedented ways, and how to reach those who have yet to cross the digital divide.
I'm Steve Daniels. I study the transformative impact of technology on individuals and societies. I am the founder of the Better World by Design conference at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design and a founding partner of Revolution x Design, a Providence-based research center that uses design to address meaningful, real-world problems. Currently, I work at IBM Research, where I study mobile social computing in emerging markets.
I am particularly interested in how people create, adapt, and use technology in resource-constrained environments, which I have written about in my book Making Do: Innovation in Kenya's Informal Economy, which you can read here.
I also design and develop websites. Here's my portfolio.
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