This Refrigerator Is Saving Lives | Norah Magero | TED

18,315 views ・ 2024-12-10

TED


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00:08
Frequent blackouts are pretty common in Kenya.
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It's quite common in towns like Makindu
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that are 100, 200 kilometers away from the capital.
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When I moved there, we'd have several blackouts,
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whether it’s several times a day or even several times a week
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or even weeklong blackouts,
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that just made it really difficult to do some things
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that I thought were basic.
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As a mom, I thought,
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I'm going to pump a lot of milk and store it.
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I'll just rush to the clinic and get the vaccine,
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but that wasn't really a guarantee in Makindu.
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My name is Norah Magero.
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I am an engineer, a mechanical engineer,
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and I run a company called Drop Access.
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We manufacture solar-powered refrigerators
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and cold-chain technologies
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that are used within the health care sector.
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There has been quite a number of people
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who've come up with alternatives for access to power.
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There's the private sector players,
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like companies that are able to fundraise abroad
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for causes within the African continent.
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They build the case, they get the financing,
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then they bring the solutions to these communities.
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But the thing about these solutions
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is that they're not all that entirely reliable.
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These solutions are provided by 90 percent foreigners.
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These foreigners possibly get their information from online sources
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and some documented research work.
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Interviewer: How do you do your research?
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NM: I do my research by literally going to the communities
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to find out what's the actual problem.
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And I do it this way because I had the rude awakening
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that the research work that is published out there,
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even from some reputable organizations, are actually not accurate.
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And it's guiding solutions that are coming into the continent,
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and we're getting it all wrong.
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I've seen a lot of technologies and solutions
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coming into the Kenyan ecosystem that don't really respect the culture.
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That does not take time to understand what the people really want.
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So I immerse myself into that community to find out,
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like, what’s the actual problem, and what do people want?
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So I started dealing with farmers,
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I started dealing with communities and homes,
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and I discovered that there was demand for cold-chain solutions,
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solar-powered cold-chain solution.
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So working with farmers,
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having my own experience with not finding vaccines for my child
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really just gave me the push
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to think of bringing in solar refrigeration
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that can be used in the healthcare sector.
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Refrigeration is not something really new.
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It's not something complex.
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You know, I understand refrigerator as an engineer.
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And I thought, I need to get down as an engineer
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and design something that fixes all these things.
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And that's just how VacciBox came to be.
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We built a lot of things from scratch,
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and we built it over a lot of challenges and difficulties,
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and I just kept on pushing at it, kept on talking about it,
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insisting that we are going to manufacture this in Kenya,
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when everybody else was like go manufacture it in China.
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You know, China has already figured it out,
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but why are you doing it here, we don't do this here.
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Because most of our technologies actually do come from abroad,
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and there is a perception that when it's built in Kenya,
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it won't perform as the ones that are being brought in from abroad.
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And I try to tell them, hey, we need to do this here
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so that we get to figure out how does it serve the Maasai communities
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or communities in Makindu
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or the communities in western Kenya.
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And also, how does it adhere to the layers of what our communities want?
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And I think all that is hard to put into perspective.
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Hence, that's why people find it crazy that I do this in Kenya.
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But then I got into this journey of designing, building VacciBox
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and demonstrating to the world, like, look, we store vaccines.
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These vaccines did not spoil.
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And actually, this child who was vaccinated, is alive and well,
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and it wasn't compromised in any way.
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I've seen a lot of foreign start-ups who are coming into Kenya
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to found companies to build a name for themselves
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and to have this pride that: β€œI went into the African continent,
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I went into Kenya, and fixed their problem.”
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I'm bothered by that.
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I want Africa to develop its own technologies.
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I want Africa to have its own manufacturing ecosystem
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because it creates jobs.
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There are a lot of compounding impacts with manufacturing.
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Our communities are so deeply layered and cultured.
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Moral engineering intertwines all technology
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with these layers of our community
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and respects it and thinks of the people first
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and what their culture says
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and what they want,
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or what works well for them.
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We should no longer be considered as the lesser continent.
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So much of the rest of the world thinks that Africa should only consume,
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and that's what we are accustomed to.
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But what if we switch the narrative a bit
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and have technology being imported from Africa to the world.
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We should be on the equal playing field
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when it comes to engineering and manufacturing
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and economies and creating jobs for people.
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That's the Africa, to me, that I want to see.
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