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PLUS

IDEA OVERVIEW

Discover African cities by those who do it and visit exhibitions virtually. Plus is both, for an original exploration of African cities, a cultural social network with a paid messaging offer and a resource for digitization and virtual visit of exhibitions and art fairs.

The application is designed as a ‘Smart City’ solution for urban navigation and dematerialized meetings. Indeed, on the one hand, PLUS is a digital guide that allows you to explore digitally and interact with the exhibitions. On the other hand, it allows you to weave a cultural network by identifying and going to the discovery of cultural actors who are inventing a new urban landscape. It aims to have African creative urbanity explored by cultural actors and exhibitions in African cities.

Plus is a mobile application that maps and makes visible figures, places or events of African cities. It identifies and offers the discovery of influential and dynamic actors in cities through their biography, their activities, their actions and the links to their pages on social networks, but also zooms in on their event or places they have created. Plus also allows you to participate in exhibitions, visit galleries and any other cultural center of the cities that are put on the application. The focus will therefore be on the new African urbanity in order to explore the creativity and innovation of the continent via an interactive device.

BACKGROUND & MOTIVATION

It has often been presented to the world as the continent of chaos, poverty, hunger, wars, epidemics and lack of industrialization. However, driven by the most dynamic urbanization ever observed, Africa is reinventing itself. In truth, Africa now appears as a continent of movement, rigorously contemporary with a daring youth from which new figures having emerged irremediably engage the gaze towards the future.

On the other hand, in Africa, when we talk about art, exhibitions, museums, galleries etc., the population tends to believe that it is an activity intended for a wealthy social class. In addition, the dynamic actors of African cities, despite growing international notoriety, are disconnected from the potential of this unlimited public represented by the African masses. PLUS proposes to dematerialize the cultural centers of African cities for the benefit of all and to shed light on the dynamic actors of the cities as well as their various commitments.

ORGANA

IDEA OVERVIEW

Organa is a start-up that brings an innovative solution to waste management. We collect organic waste as soon as it is produced.

In Togo, heavy waste such as metals and plastics have some collection points set up across the city by designated organizations, but as for organic waste, there are not many options for people to recycle and compost. To tackle the environmental issue and protect our own health, especially for children, action is needed. That’s why Organa, together with SCoPe, another Togolese startup, team up together to tackle the challenge of good waste management.

BACKGROUND & MOTIVATION

Waste collection and management have always been a real problem in urban areas around the world. We produce all types of waste, and organic waste is one type of them.

The rapid urban developments that we are currently facing accentuate the problem of organic waste management. Here in Togo, people tend to dump everything together and burn the piles of garbage in a street. The habit is not present for its odor and look, as well as for the environment itself. How can we effectively manage the waste we produce?

SYSWOE

IDEA OVERVIEW

Sys’Woe offers a local digital exchange system that connects individuals, vendors, and service providers residing in the same geographic area, with the WOE as currency.

The WOE is a complementary or hybrid electronic alternative currency backed by the FCFA (Togolese currency), and uses a web and mobile application based on a QR code scan.

BACKGROUND & MOTIVATION

The objective of the system is to allow each seller or service provider who is facing sales difficulty to offer their goods in the system within WOEs. It creates its own exchange system with the local community, adding more democratic values/

The system will allow users to exchange their skills and goods in their own alternative currency. Consumers who have made more purchases in the system receive bonuses to encourage more sales. The sales can be made within the members of the system, and profit can be converted back to FCFA.

TECHCONTAINERS

IDEA OVERVIEW

TechContainers offers education spaces for children living on the streets, with a spirit of #LowHighTech and technological democracy — to make everyone equal in the face of new technologies.

Each container is equipped with a 3D print made of electronic waste, free wifi, workspaces and we offer various programs within it. Supported jointly by the young community of WoeLab, some of these stations could be taken over in the evening by NGOs that work with street children and we provide support for their activities.

BACKGROUND & MOTIVATION

The motivation of this project is to offer training and education, to create jobs, and to encourage health and care for street children by democratizing digital technology & design and via rapid prototyping processes. By placing dedicated stations close to our target community, we offer shelters and resource centers to associations working with street children.

URBANATTIC

IDEA OVERVIEW

Urbanattic provides a fully decarbonized organic business; production, distribution, ideation, education of organic food with a smart approach based on ICT. It is a platform of urban farming and « urban granaries », for the production and development of organic crops by utilizing the available spaces in Lomé, Togo.

On the platform, you can purchase organic food, work on our vegetable gardens together, and organize a collaborative kitchen at your school or company. There is also a Food-hackathon, events, school programs, inviting the next generation to develop a more healthy, sustainable food system in our cities. We also hope to gather necessary data and statistics around the food industry for better pubic action and strategy making.

BACKGROUND & MOTIVATION

The African cities are rapidly expanding, and we’ll soon face the issue of available resources in near future. The rural agricultural land, which has long been supporting the urban dwellers, is also changing, and we’re more and more dependent on imported industrial products without much traceability.

However, there is a potential in a city like Lomé, which is less dense compared to megacities like Lagos, where parks, brown-field, neglected land could be used to solve this problem.

WEOBOTS

IDEA OVERVIEW

Woebots makes #LowHighTech 3D printers. It is the first “Made in Africa” 3D printer under the mother program 3DprintAfrica, whose objective is to bring the technology available to everybody.

Starting in June 2017, OpenCode Academy by WoeLabs aims to prepare young teenagers (9 to 15 years old) for the increasingly digitalized world. Computer science students and volunteers of Woelabs help young teens with learning digital devices and getting familiar with new technologies.

At the beginning of every school year, we start by asking kids what they want to do – and all year long we encourage them with the realization of their own project… with computer classes, programming, design, DIY, modeling, electronics, prototyping, and 3D printing. The kids are free to change their ideas throughout the year and are encouraged to help others.

SCOPE

IDEA OVERVIEW

No more plastic waste in nature!

SCoPE (Sorting & Collecting Plastics in our Environment) wants to provide solutions to the plastic waste problem through ecological innovation in the African context. We create a local plastic bank and use 1) an alert system (eco-beep) 2) real-time collection monitoring to encourage people to divide & help us collect plastic waste from a household.

People should simply signup and subscribe our service, and receive our collection kit. They then have to fill in plastic waste and let us know by beeping the exo-beep. We’ll then come and get the waste. The SCoPE service has now 47 users in a neighborhood, within a radius of 1 kilometer around SCoPE’s current offices. Users usually fill in a kit collection bag in about 1 month before asking us to pick it up.

BACKGROUND & MOTIVATION

The idea of the project is based on a simple observation: Lomé produces more than 3 million tons of waste per year, but only 300,000 tons per year are collected and transported to the only waste treatment center. The absence of ambitious policies of selective sorting makes Lomé one of the most vulnerable cities in the world to plastic pollution. The lack of public garbage cans and functional collection systems encourage people to throw their garbage directly into the streets.

Tons of plastic are used every day in households, services, markets, schools, etc., but the resulting waste is very poorly managed and thus endangers the environment. However, there are companies that are interested in recycling, but their suppliers, i.e. the collecting population, are faced with the problems of collection conditions (dumps, garbage cans, gutters, etc.).