NEWS POST: Uganda's Kiira Motors Unveils 'Africa's First Solar Bus'

Kiira Motors now hopes to attract partners to help mass produce the bus

A solar-powered bus described by its Ugandan makers as the first in Africa has been driven in public.

Kiira Motors' Kayoola prototype electric bus was shown off at a stadium in Uganda's capital, Kampala.

One of its two batteries can be charged by solar panels on the roof which increases the vehicle's 80km (50 mile) range.

The makers now hope to attract partners to help manufacture the bus for the mass market.

Kiira Motors' chief executive Paul Isaac Musasizi told BBC News that he had been "humbled" by the large and positive reaction to the test drive.

People have been excited by the idea that Uganda is able to produce the concept vehicle, or prototype, and Mr Musasizi said he wanted it to help the country "champion the automotive, engineering and manufacturing industries" in the region.

He also hopes that it will generate employment, predicting that by 2018, more than 7,000 people could be directly and indirectly employed in the making of the Kayoola.

But backing from international companies, which make vehicle parts, is essential for the project to take off.

The vision is that by 2039 the company will be able to manufacture all the parts and assemble the vehicle in Uganda.

The 35-seat bus is intended for urban areas rather than inter-city use because of the restrictions on how far it can travel.

If it is mass produced, each bus would cost up to US$58,000 (£40,000), which Mr Musasizi says is a a competitive price.

Kiira Motors grew out of a project at Uganda's Makerere University, which is now a shareholder in the company, and it has also benefitted from government funding.

Solar panels on the roof of the bus will top up the vehicle's battery

Ugandan Engineers Have Built A Solar-Powered Bus For Africa’s Roads

Ugandan engineers have built a solar-powered electric bus that they say is a first of its kind in East Africa and think it will revolutionize the automative market in the region. The Kayoola, as it’s called, is a 35-seater that can run for up to 80 kilometers on two power banks that can also be recharged by solar panels installed on the roof of the bus.

Paul Musasizi, chief executive officer of Kiira Motors Corporation (KMC), the state-funded company behind the vehicle, says with the potential for solar power in Uganda, it only made sense that engineers started to leverage the energy source for cars.

“The bus is purely electric and our idea is to test the strength of solar energy in enabling people to move,” he told a local newspaper.

The company built the prototype with funds from the Ugandan government. But KMC is hoping to attract investors to the project to start producing the buses for the mass market by 2018 at a retail price of US$58,000. Typically, 35-seater buses retail between US$35,000 to US$50,000.

“As we continue with developing concepts, we are also studying the market,” Doreen Orishaba, one of the engineers in the project, told Uganda’s Observer newspaper. “We want to see that we don’t make vehicles for stocking but for production on orders.”

The original Kiira.(Reuters/Edward Echwalu)

This is not KMC’s first foray into energy efficient car-making. Last year, the company introduced the Kiira Smack, a petrol-electric hybrid that it said would come into the market by 2018 as well for a US$20,000 price. But analysts were doubtful at the time of the project’s commercial viability. The price could prove prohibitive, they argued, in a market that sells an estimated 20,000 cars a year. Additionally, in a part of the world where electricity is not a widely available commodity, electric dependent cars could put undue pressure on national grids.

But by using solar as a power source for the Kayoola, KMC may have found a way to overcome that challenge in this instance.

“Uganda being one of the 13 countries positioned along the equator, gives us about eight hours of significant solar energy that can be harvested,” Musasizi says.
Originally published (STORY 1) in BBC and (STORY 2) in QUARTZ AFRICA  

Creativity And Innovation In Action — Spreading Creativity Through Informal And Non-Formal Learning

In this blog post, NAIJAGRAPHITTI Blog Managing Editor/Publisher wishes to dwell briefly on platforms using informal and non-formal learning in fostering creativity and how to develop 'soft skills' outside education and training.

The best way to see and demonstrate creativity and its value is to see creativity in action, in society. There is no evidence as potent as when seemingly intractable conundrums are resolved through creative problem solving and creative thinking.

In September 2014, in Bangalore, India, a group of creative practitioners founded SPREAD.

SPREAD is a learning and growing organization established to infuse creativity into people, processes and systems.  The founders of SPREAD say the organization is "run by creative practitioners, curious and open, constantly creating and sharing our knowledge, ideas and craft by designing immersive and interactive learning experiences."

SPREAD designs interventions which help small business, innovation, social enterprise, small business marketing strategy, start-up, business strategy, entrepreneurship, entrepreneur networking, young entrepreneur, startup businesses, social innovation, business startup, social entrepreneurship, design thinking, and business education-support - contacts & resources

The best way to see and demonstrate creativity and its value is to see creativity in action, in society. There is no evidence as potent as when seemingly intractable conundrums are resolved through creative problem solving and creative thinking.

One example of spreading creativity and hands-on learning through an individual comes from the work that David Sengeh is doing through Global Minimum Inc, an NGO, which is highlighted by UNICEF as part of its innovation map in its The State of the World’s Children 2015: Reimagine the future initiative. The story is told in "Making Makers: the need to spread creativity and hands-on learning". David Sengeh is empowering youth in Sierra Leone to take on a special kind of problem: tackle the ravages of war by providing prosthetics for the war-maimed.

Sengeh narrated: 

Before leaving Sierra Leone to further my education, I spent lots of time at a camp for amputees in Freetown, where I learned about their personal constraints and the design challenges related to their prostheses. This experience shaped my academic training, and today, as a Biomechatronics Engineer, I develop custom, comfortable prosthetic interfaces using robust and predictive models of the human body. In this pursuit, I cross traditional academic boundaries, combining medical imaging, design, manufacturing and modeling. At the Media Lab where I am currently pursuing my PhD, we are sometimes encouraged to first create solutions, then think about the problem. More commonly, students tackle tough problems that seem insurmountable at first – and they approach these problems not because they have all the required expertise, but just because they can.

This method of problem solving is typically missing among youth in Sierra Leone, who might expect that an external body will solve the challenges in their community. Why? Because that’s what the numerous development signboards lead us to believe. And if the problem is unsolved for too long, then there might be chaos, violence and bullets. In countries where youth make up a significant proportion of the population and face high unemployment, there is a unique opportunity to provide tools and platforms to enable them to become problem-solvers in their communities. Youth must be the makers who transform their societies towards prosperity.

First, we must think of youth as ‘ready’ to tackle large problems. They often have passion, are playful and have the creativity that allow them to look at problems in different ways. Coupled with their unique perspective and guidance from experienced mentors, this freedom to create can be powerful, with the potential to solve small pieces of large problems.

Second, children in schools and informal learning environments must be taught to question the status quo and then feel empowered to do something about it. They must be given opportunities to learn through experience and hands-on activities, and they need support to form unique learning pathways that will keep them civically engaged – rather than being batched together in a single schooling container.

Third, we must recognize that the skill sets needed for growth and global competition are constantly changing. Today, self-efficacy, empathy and critical thinking are as important as reading, writing and numeracy.

There are many organizations and initiatives tackling various aspects of engaging children and youth as problem solvers rather than as problems themselves.

NAIJAGRAPHITTI Blog is an initiative set-up to contribute to tackling various aspects of engaging learners including children and youth as problem solvers rather than as problems themselves.

NAIJAGRAPHITTI Blog, Nigeria’s premier educational blog on CREATIVITY & INNOVATION. NAIJAGRAPHITTI Blog is published as an online portal of fourteen (14) concatenated blogs interspersed with bespoke live, face-to-face activities and media events to democratize and popularize everything CREATIVITY and INNOVATION. 

NAIJAGRAPHITTI Blog publishes informative and articulate posts based upon empirical principles, grounded in theory and better practice but without allowing theoretical conceptualizing get in the way of easily digestible and accessible knowledge and lessons sharing.

The specific aim, in the short- to mid-term, of the NAIJAGRAPHITTI Blog is to advocate for a culture enabling CREATIVITY and INNOVATION, at policy level, promote the propagation and fostering CREATIVITY and INNOVATION by making the topics of CREATIVITY and INNOVATION more popular, at individual and community levels, in order to increase Nigerian wit African publics’ awareness, knowledge, understanding and practice of the topics. This commitment entails delivery of offerings that educate, inform and propagate the concepts of CREATIVITY and INNOVATION and their relevance and application in the Nigerian public/social sphere.

NAIJAGRAPHITTI Blog spurs a reader or hobbyist or an amateur researcher or teacher/facilitator to garner knowledge in all matters related to CREATIVITY & INNOVATION.

NAIJAGRAPHITTI Blog focuses particular attention on creativity development in children and early child development.

NAIJAGRAPHITTI Blog advocates for the introduction of teaching creativity and its pertaining concepts to the Nigerian education and curriculum across several disciplines in its broadest ramifications in order to affect several aspects of Nigerian life as we know it today.

The blog seeks to bridge the gap for readers/website visitors between Nigeria’s formal and informal learning systems which research has proven are, in their current form, not effectively tailored for its graduates to gain and deploy active imagination, creative thinking and problem solving skills.