BRCK allows entrepreneurs and developers in Africa to work without interruption
Juliana Rotich wants Africa to be a vital part of the digital revolution. She’s working on the problems of electricity, connectivity, and communication costs.
The map of the undersea fiberoptic cable shows that Africa has good coverage but connectivity is still a large problem. As a founder of the Ushahidi software Juliana worked to map connection points in Africa. Their iHub in Nairobi is a central space where entrepreneurs and developers can collaborate.
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The software found unexpected value in Haiti and Japan providing data to disaster relief workers. Mapping is now done to show crisis areas, election data, corruption data and environmental monitoring.
From her base in Kenya it can cost six times as much to call within Africa vs calling the US, Canada or China. Blackouts can be a daily occurrence and a major disruption to workflow and connectivity. Modems used in Africa used the same technology as the rest of the world, but were loaded with an entirely new set of constraints.
The solution is to use the function to drive the technology, instead of the function and potential following the technology. A running joke at Ushahidi is that if a product works in Africa, it will work anywhere.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1776324009/brck-your-backup-generator-for-the-internet
The BRCK is Ushahidi’s redesigned modem. It acts as a backup to the internet by leveraging the cloud. When power is lost the BRCK will search for and connect to the nearest network. It has eight hours of battery life so that developers can keep working during a power outage, and in rural areas a BRCK can be the main point of connection.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/ksr/projects/393655/photo-main.jpg?1367437972
BRCK has been successfully funded through Kickstarter and is now in production. Juliana asserts that the building blocks of the digital economy will be connectivity and entrepreneurship. The BRCK is Ushahidi’s attempt to help innovation and development flourish in Africa.