Category: Online Special

Many years before Mr. M.D. Abubakar came into the scene as the substantive inspector general of police; there were police check-points on the nation high-ways. On assumptions of office, the check-points suddenly disappeared. And now unfortunately, having retired after serving the nation meritoriously for 35 years; the checkpoints have all return back! What’s going on? And what was the root cause of this unpopular policy reversal?

If the check-points were returned back because of insecurity in the country, very few Nigerians will agree with that line of thinking, because of the very minimal value and benefit they added in that direction and bitter experience of the past.

Many atrocities committed at check-points are still fresh in our memory, and only an infinitesimally small percentage will forget in a hurry how notorious the check-points have all turn out to be, given the many cases of accidental discharges; avoidable accidents, unnecessary time wastage and forceful collections of ‘money for the boys’!

Indeed, daily collections of bribes were carried out openly without any modicum of shame. And God help a motorist who carry overload or fail to update his particulars. Thus, the purpose for which check-points were set up initially to serve as bulwark against crime via security surveillance was defeated.

So, realizing how these check-points practically became source of embarrassment and nuisance to the nation might strongly be the sole reason why, the former police boss, M.D. Abubakar made up his mind to do away with them. And it worked perfectly well. Indeed, that singular action drew huge accolades from many people.

It’s indeed a source of worry that since the departure of the former I.G., motorist flying the nation high ways can notice new hype among police competing among themselves in setting up new check-points in many places now a days. Take for example, Kano to Zaria road where we now have more than 7 Police extorting centers spread strategically along the road!! A normal journey that used to take one and half hour from Kano to Zaria now takes a minimum of two and half ours as a result of those ubiquitous check-points. What a waste of time!

It also remains true; whether the new Police boss Mr. Suleiman Abba is aware of these unfortunate developments or not that the generality of the populace are yearning for a return to the status-quo ante. Let those so-called police check points that sprang up moment after the new Inspector general of police assume office be dismantle to allow for free movements of goods and services!

Their nuisance values by far, outweighed their benefit if any to the people. And the fact that the key to crime bursting and practical solution to the insecurity problem bedeviling the country still remain Intelligence gathering, not the current hype in returning police check-points that are mere extorting centers and a negative image maker to the police force!

Tsakuwa can be reached on Tsakuwa2000@yahoo.com

Al-Oula Factory Transforms Tires From A Source Of Pollution To Safe Tiles

In Lebanon, burning tires has become part of a local culture prevalent in several regions, whether to express anger and protest in demonstrations and strikes, or to get rid of high volumes of used tires, considering it as the only available solution. However, burning tires is a crime against environment, because of all the CO2 emissions that are thrown in the atmosphere. For this reason, some Lebanese municipalities choose to burry tires within garbage “mountains”, not minding that the components of those tires are among the most resistant to natural elements, and that a tire needs hundreds of years to desintegrate. Lebanon is far from being the only country to face this issue: in fact, this is a global crisis, mainly in developing countries, where no means are available for a safe disposal of used tires through recycling. Yet, there is still hope for a solution in the southern Lebanese town of Toula, the location of a tire recycling factory named Al-Oula and managed by Ali Issa, Ahmad Shamseddine and Oula Issa, three young entrepreneurs who have a sense of responsibility towards the environment, as well as creative ideas.

“Don’t burn it… blend it”

In 2011, the three young entrepreneurs decided to launch Al-Oula factory, taking advantage of long years of family experience in recycling rubber into various products sold to different shops. The main idea behind Al-Oula factory was to avoid burning or burrying tires. Instead, those were to be blended and turned into powder, and then into floor tiles for paveways, playgrounds, sports clubs and kindergartens. The project needed a probation period, since the young entrepreneurs imported the machinery and relied on the Kafalat program to finance their project. A year later however, the factory started its operations successfully, without any official support. Today, it fulfills two essential needs in Lebanon: First, it helps getting rid of damaged tires, which were considered as a big burden, mainly for municipalities and stores specialized in selling and repairing tires. Second, it helps providing safe rubber tiles to many facilities, while before, this kind of merchandise was mainly imported from China. That’s not all, since Al-Oula competes today with imported merchandise, thanks to the quality and prices of its products. Indeed, it has already started to export tiles to neighboring countries, mainly Jordan.

Partner Ali issa explained to Al-Hayat newspaper that the project was mainly established, because of the wish to solve the tire burning problem and to get rid of its negative effects. His factory has become the first of its kind in Lebanon and the neighborhood. Before launching the project, the three partners studied the market and its need for safe tiles with a ten years guarantee. They found that such tiles were imported at high prices, in comparison with those set by Al-Oula factory today.Then, they contacted municipalities, namely the Saida municipality, which is close to Toul, in order to provide tires after the machines became ready for starting the blending process. Today, Al-Oula factory is able, within five hours, to blend 200 tires and turn them into a powder that is sold to some tradesmen without processing. Later on it, the powder is set to be used in sports playgrounds, or to be turned to compressed tiles of various shapes and sizes, used for paving various surfaces. Nowadays, the factory is receiving orders from various Lebanese regions and even neighboring countries, which show a will to use these eco-friendly tiles that are not affected by natural elements, such as heat and rain. Most importantly, these tiles provide necessary protection for people walking on them, especially children for whom regular tiles are not suitable.

Issa noted that the only problem facing the factory operations is the diminishing number of tires arriving from municipalities, especially Saida. However, this is good news for environment, because it is a prelude to finding a solution for the long lasting problem of damaged tires. Issa proposed sending trucks to different Lebanese regions and collecting damaged tires everywhere. This would help expanding business and provide support for municipalities outside Saida in solving the tire problem within their circumference. Indeed, the factory vehicles have already started roaming various regions and collecting tires, in order to avoid relying on limited supplies. Great numbers of tires are delivered to the Tool factory, which is transforming the huge tires into a powder that is ready to be used in different contexts.

Development of the Project

Al-Oula factory is now self-sustaining growth and advancing thanks to the individual efforts of its partners, and the help of local workers who find their livelihood in those tires, since Toul, as well as other villages in South Lebanon, are in need of such development projects, in order to provide job opportunities and avoid migration to the capital. So far, no official help was granted to such a unique factory, except for some moral support that is not useful, in reality, for turning the factory into a role model.

Yet, the partners consider that the factory will not stop here and that the development path ahead of it is still long. Indeed, Issa spoke of ongoing efforts to create a machine that produces big tiles, instead of being limited to small or medium-sized ones. This will allow the factory participate in bigger  scale projects, and provide safe tiles for the coverage of wider surfaces. When we visited the factory, we saw that efforts were already ongoing for the production of this machine, which shows once again the capacities of the Lebanese young generation that is able to make a difference with very limited capabilities.

The partners are also working on a different idea, which is to reuse the linen present inside the tires and put aside at the time of the blending. Indeed, huge loads of linen were accumulated in Al-Oula factory during the past several years; but since the three guys feel responsible for the environment, they will never throw that linen away. Instead, they are preparing a new project, aimed at recycling linen into boards used for decoration. This project is still under study, but the sure thing is that each component can be recycled without incurring any harm to the environment.

Today, the three partners are row models for the Lebanese youth who are interested in their local community and who are creating work opportunities for themselves and for others, while thinking of all the implications of their project, namely on the environment. In addition to the material expenses, since the biggest bill paid by the Lebanese people is for healthcare, because of the high levels of pollution, the solution to the tire problem will not be in burning them, but in recycling them within factories that are accomodated in the same way as Al-Oula factory.

If you suddenly find yourself in labour pains, in a deeply rural area in Uganda, chances are, if that birth has complications, you and the baby might not survive. Health centres are too far for many of these women.  That is why the village ambulance has been a godsend for many women and communities in general

Bundibugyo, Uganda. The idea of the village ambulance in Uganda is one that was born from unusual circumstances. At the age of seven, tragedy visited Christopher Ategeka’s home in Kagote, Kabarole District. He helplessly looked on as both his father and mother succumbed to the HIV/AIDS epidemic leaving him to fend for his four siblings.

Within a year of his parents passing, his brother, too, died of unknown causes while being taken to the hospital. When all hope seemed to be lost, Carol Adams an American, through her locally based organisation, Youth Encouragement Services (YES) that caters for needy children, took on his guardianship. Adams saw Ategeka through his primary and secondary education.

She recalls how during his primary school, he would walk from his grandmother’s place in Kagote to school.

“We got him a bicycle to help but even that was not enough. We had to get him to stay at his grandfather’s place in Fort Portal town where he was closer to school.”

After secondary school, Adams used her connections to get Ategeka a foster family in the United States during which time he pursued a Master’s Degree at the University of California.

Upon his return to Uganda in 2011, Ategeka, recounts how recollections from his past fostered the notion that low-cost transportation would not only improve livelihoods but also save lives.

“I used to walk miles to Ruteete, a rural school I went to. That bicycle that I got from Carol Adams orphanage changed everything from walking miles to riding in minutes to reach school,” he says.

“When I started CA bikes, a non-profit organisation, we began by making bicycles and wheelchairs, and I felt more needed to be done.”

He explains how he used the knowledge he had acquired and came up with the idea of a bicycle ambulance.

“The design however was a challenge. We came up with about twelve designs until we figured out something that would work.”

The design he picked on was one inspired by Darly Funk, a 59-year-old American inventor of the village ambulance, which at the time was being manufactured in Zambia and distributed to over five different countries in Africa.

So using locally sourced parts and scraps of metal and a small team of skilled craftsmen, Ategeka and his team started to assemble the ambulance and distribute it out of the district.

“Within three years, we have distributed 120 ambulances that now serve more than 10,000 people in communities nationwide,” he says.

However, this was not the first time for the village ambulance to be applied in Africa as a transport solution bridging patients in rural areas to healthcare.

Where did the village ambulance come from?

It all began in 2007 in Zambia with an organisation called Zambikes, offering unique transportation solutions in Africa. Their primary goal was to provide affordable, high-quality bicycles specifically designed for African roads.

In 2008, the village ambulance was created to meet this need and since that time, over 1,700 village ambulances have been distributed in more than five countries across Africa.

In 2012, the Zambikes designers and manufacturers of the village ambulance decided to take their operations out of Zambia, picking Uganda as the country of choice to pilot their innovation.

“As they interacted with local community leaders, medical professionals, development workers and others, it became acutely apparent that there was a critical need for basic medical transportation solutions in rural Africa,” explains Jared White, Operations Director, Pulse

Zambikes then formed a local enterprise based in Kampala called Pulse which started manufacturing ambulances such as what Ategeka was making.

When Pulse entered the Ugandan market, CA bikes stopped manufacturing and instead started buying ambulances using money from donors which it would distribute for free to communities across the country.

“Our part in the arrangement was to manufacture the ambulance, which we would then sell to Ategeka at a subsidized price and he would then distribute to the different parts of the country,” explains Jared.

What is the current situation?

“Currently, the village ambulance is being applied in 29 districts in regions all over the country and we have distributed 177 ambulances,” says White.

Delivery of services such as palliative care whose access  in the country as per 2011 WHO statistics was at a 10 per cent low, have also been improved by the advent of the village ambulance.

“I was very excited when I first used the ambulance because for so long I was stuck at home ill and couldn’t reach the health centre for treatment but that ambulance changed that. It has helped me to move there conveniently,” narrates one beneficiary Annet Rukundo, a 33 year old lady from Kyangwali refugee settlement in western Uganda.

Today, Ategeka believes that improving the healthcare system in the country heavily depends on the innovation and reveals his organisation CA Bikes is in the process of propping up new ones.

“We are now taking on the mobile clinic. It will be the next innovation we roll out,” he says.

The Dutch wonder boy Boyan Slat has overcome great odds—not least his tender age—and kept afloat his unconventional idea for how to clean the oceans. Having won over the support of numerous experts, his foundation, The Ocean Cleanup, has a plan to rid the seas of tons of plastic garbage.

When the Dutch teenager Boyan Slat, then 16, saw alarming quantities of plastic floating in the Aegean Sea while diving on a Greek family vacation in 2011, he thought—like many others would—that something must be done.

But because Slat is not like most people, he has actually come up with a potential solution.

“Once I’m working on something, I only stop when it is done,” he said, sitting in the Delft offices of The Ocean Cleanup, the non-profit organization he founded to rid the world’s oceans of plastic.

After noticing the debris in Greece, Slat embarked on a high school project with a partner, trying to measure plastic pollution in the North Sea. Though the exercise yielded little useful data—the measuring tool the teens built broke in the ocean’s current—it did result in a good grade and a notice in a small Delftnewspaper.

An organizer for the local TEDx Talk asked Slat to present his findings, so he fleshed out his idea: rather than actively fishing for plastic with nets, he proposed a passive clean-up system using the natural movement of currents and the wind to trap garbage against a barrier.

His talk was well-received, and he has since assembled a team of close to 100 experts—offshore engineers, maritime legal experts, ecologists, marine biologists—to test, optimize, and develop his system. Many are working pro bono. A full-time, mostly Dutch team of around 10 oversee and coordinate the work.

Their solution is a V-shaped floating boom that reaches about 3 meters under the surface of the water. It captures the plastic that drifts into it while leaving wildlife unscathed, then channels the plastic into a solar-powered extracting platform.

The goal is to install the system by 2020 midway between California and Hawaii, close to the North Pacific Garbage Patch. Estimated to cost around US $300 million (Slat claims that would be 33 times cheaper than using vessels with nets), the contraption extends roughly 100 km. The set-up could be replicated elsewhere.

By assembling a team to build what is essentially a sophisticated vacuum cleaner and dustpan, Slat has shown the power of a determined outsider who is willing to ask the right people for help. In the last year alone, he says he has sent out roughly 13,000 emails.

“When a young man of 17 years comes to you and tells you his plan, it is rather shocking, because many people have tried to do this,” said Dr. Santiago Garcia Espallargas, from the faculty of aerospace engineering at the elite Technical University of Delft.

Slat had attended one of Garcia’s talks at the university and presented his ideas in the subsequent question period. “His vocabulary of topic was of course not very well developed,” Garcia said. “But he was totally open to exploring things he didn’t know about…Here was this really young student coming up with ideas that could change the world.”

Once Slat’s cleanup project started to take shape and garner media attention, experts came knocking at his door. “Those most eager to help are the ones who see the problem firsthand, like sailors and divers,” said Jan de Sonneville, The Ocean Cleanup’s lead engineer.

Though estimates vary, Greenpeace believes that each year 10 million tons of plastic end up in the ocean. Eighty percent comes from land, while the rest is from commercial ships that lose their cargo or illegally dump. Pushed by currents, it tends to accumulate in large patches, far out at sea. The biggest is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which Greenpeace says is the size of Texas. In addition to affecting birds, mammals, and fish who swallow or entangle themselves in the plastic, the trash eventually breaks down into fragments, creating a toxic soup that enters the food chain.

Slat’s project has engendered some skepticism. One of the main criticisms is that the boom will not be able to catch the smallest fragments. (De Sonneville points out that it still captures plastic before it breaks down.) This spring, the Ocean Cleanup released a 530-page feasibility study outlining the challenges and solutions of its proposal in great detail—from the legal implications of anchoring a garbage extractor in the Pacific to the ways that found plastic can be recycled.

At the time of this writing, the group had amassed nearly 70 percent of its latest crowdfunding goal, US $2 million. That money, along with in-kind contributions—such as the free use of specialized equipment or hours worked by expert engineers—will pay for the pilot study, including several scale models of the system.

Though much has been made of Slat’s youth, he seems to find nothing unusual in organizing such an ambitious project. “It wasn’t like we planned on [my age] being a PR tool,” he said. But he did concede that it helped him gain access to experts during the early stages. “If I was 40 years old, I think it would have been a lot more difficult.”