How it began
Kodjo Afate Gnikou, described by Waag Futurelab as a 33-year-old geographer and occasional maintenance technician, designed and built the printer at WoeLab, a maker space in Lome that calls itself Africa's first space for democratic technology. Fast Company reported on it in October 2013. A crowdfunding campaign on the French-language platform Ulule raised about 4,000 US dollars for development. The machine was named W.Afate.
Before it existed
Fast Company set the project against West Africa's electronic waste problem, noting that hundreds of tons of discarded computers and industrial equipment arrive each month at the Agbogbloshie dump in neighboring Ghana, with usable parts mixed in with toxic waste. Desktop 3D printers such as the Prusa Mendel were popular in the United States and Europe but had to be bought new.
How it works
The W.Afate is a home-built version of the Prusa Mendel design. Its frame and motion parts come from old computers, printers and scanners collected at dumping places and junk yards in Lome, including the rails and belts of flatbed scanners. A few parts, such as motors, had to be bought new. The reported parts cost was under 100 US dollars.
What changed first
Gnikou told Fast Company that his aims were to give young people hope and to show that Africa has a place in the global technology market. The design was meant to let people build a 3D printer in any setting from equipment already at hand. He also took part, in a Togolese and French team, in NASA's International Space Apps Challenge with a proposal for fabricating custom mechanical parts.
