Thierry N’Doufou and his team of IT specialists developed a tablet — the Qelasy — specifically for the Ivorian market as they aim to bring local school kids into the digital era. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Marc-Andre Boisvert
ABIDJAN, Apr 15 2014 (IPS)

When Ivorian Thierry N’Doufou saw local school kids suffering under the weight of their backpacks full of textbooks, it sparked an idea of how to close the digital gap where it is the largest — in local schoolrooms.

N’Doufou is one of 10 Ivorian IT specialists who developed the Qelasy — an 8-inch, Ivorian-engineered tablet that is set to be released next month by his technology company Siregex.The parent- and teacher-controlled tablet replaces all textbooks, correspondence books, calculators and the individual chalkboards often used in Ivorian classrooms.

“It is more than me feeling sorry for them. It is also about filling the digital gap between the south and the north, and bringing Ivorian education into the 21st century,” N’Doufou tells IPS.

Qelasy means “classroom” in several African languages, including Akan, Malinke, Lingala and Bamileke.

The Qelasy team began by converting all government-approved Ivorian textbooks into digital format.

“We were obligated to process everything in a way to have quality images for high definition screens. It is a lot of work,” explains N’Doufou, who is CEO of Siregex.

“We also enriched the curriculum with images and videos in way to make the educational experience more convivial.”

A solution to Ivorian problems 

The tablet uses an Android operating system and is resistant to water splashes, dust, humidity and heat.

“The Qelasy is protected against everything that an African pupil without transportation might encounter during their walk home from school,” says N’Doufou.

“We knew we needed our own product … Our clients’ needs are very specific,” he explained.

The parent- and teacher-controlled tablet replaces all textbooks, correspondence books, calculators and the individual chalkboards often used in Ivorian classrooms.

It can also be programmed to allow kids to surf the web or play games according to a pre-defined timetable. Siregex staff have also developed a store where parents and educators can buy over 1,000 elements like apps, educational materials and books.

While the Qelasy is currently focused on education, its marketing director Fabrice Dan tells IPS that users will soon be able to use it for other things. “We believe in technology as a way to create positive changes. And we believe in education. But eventually, we will present solutions in other fields, like agriculture and microcredit,” he says.

Qelasy was launched at Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress 2014.  Exactly how much it will sell for has not yet been determined, but it is expected to be priced between 275 and 315 dollars.

That’s a steep price in a country where, according to government figures, only two million of its 23 million people are classified as middle class, earning between two and 20 dollars a day.

The Qelasy — an 8-inch, Ivorian-engineered tablet that is set to be released in May by local technology company Siregex. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

While N’Doufou expects the government to purchase a few tablets for use in schools, this product will mostly benefit the country’s middle and upper classes.

For now, it is only available for the Ivorian market, but the firm is targeting Francophone and Anglophone Africa.

However, the biggest challenge to the success of the product remains the electricity deficit. In a country where, according to the World Bank, only 59 percent of the population has access to electricity, a tablet with an eight-hour battery life faces limited penetration.

But N’Doufou says “There is an 80 percent cellphone penetration rate in Côte d’Ivoire in spite of the low electricity penetration. People find solutions in villages. They will for this too.”

While N’Doufou says “most of the know-how comes from here,” the Qelasy was assembled in the Chinese manufacturing hub of Shenzen, where 10,000 units have been produced.

Other Ivorian Tech Solutions 

The Qelasy is merely the latest in locally-developed technologies designed specifically to answer Ivorian problems.

Last week, young Ivorian programmer Regis Bamba launched an app to record the licence plate numbers and other details of taxis. Taxi Tracker allows a user to send this information about the taxi they are travelling in to selected users who can follow their journey in real time.

It is an attempt to find a way to prevent incidents like the murder of young Ivorian model Awa Fadiga, who was attacked during a taxi ride home in March.

The story of Fadiga’s tragic death gripped the nation as it exposed gaps in the country’s security and healthcare systems. She had been left untreated in a comatose state for more than 12 hours at a local hospital, which allegedly refused to treat her until payment for her care was received.

“It is my reaction to her death. I saw her picture, and I thought that could be my little sister. I told myself that I could not just sit back with my arms crossed,” Bamba tells IPS.

“It is my concrete solution as a citizen until the authorities do something meaningful to protect citizens. So Awa’s death will not be in vain.”

Another application, Mô Ni Bah, was developed by Jean Delmas Ehui in 2013 and allows Ivorians to declare births through SMS.

Trained locals then transfer the information provided in the SMSes to a registration authority. It has been another important invention in a country where the great distance between rural areas and government centres has hindered birth registration. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund, almost a third of births are undeclared here.

Bacely Yoro Bi, a technology evangelist, internet strategist and organiser of ConnecTIC — a gathering of Abidjan’s IT enthusiasts — says there is definitively a boom in the local IT business.

“There is a lot happening here in terms of technology, although it is still limited to Abidjan. There are several start-ups that have been created with a local focus,” he tells IPS.

Part of the success, says Yoro Bi, is because of the cooperation among developers.

“Qelasy has been possible because there is a techie community that support each other,” N’Doufou points out.

Yoro Bi says that Côte d’Ivoire’s inventions should be exported to the rest of West Africa and to the world.

With the creation of two free trade zones dedicated to technology in Abidjan’s suburbs, and investments in internet infrastructure, he predicts that inventors like N’Doufou and Bamba now have the potential to go beyond the national borders.

Afnan Hamad (far right) and her colleagues demonstrate their invention to convert plastic waste into fuel. Credit: Jillian Kestler-D'Amours/IPS

By Jillian Kestler-D'Amours
RAMALLAH, Occupied West Bank, Dec 16 2012 (IPS)

Afnan Hamad stands proudly in front of a booth at the Ramallah Cultural Palace exhibition hall, three plastic bottles filled with discoloured liquid on the table in front of her.

“We designed a device to convert plastic waste into gasoline, kerosene and diesel fuel,” explains the 23-year-old chemical engineering graduate from An-Najah National University in Nablus, pointing to one of the bottles. “We hope to see a real factory built, and be the first supplier of alternative fuel in Palestine.”

Hamad and her colleagues – Marah Jamous, Mohammad Manasrah and Rahal Rashed – displayed their machine to convert waste into reusable fuel as part of the ‘Made in Palestine 2012’ fair held last week in Ramallah, an annual event that aims to promote skills and innovations that often get buried beneath the hardships of daily life in Occupied Palestine.

While it started off as a miniature experiment, Hamad’s machine can now hold ten kilogrammes of plastic waste and produce nine litres of fuel, she explained, adding that the invention was designed to address economic and environmental problems prevalent in the area.

“Using our device, we can get rid of a huge amount of waste, which is difficult to do in Palestine,” she told IPS. “Also since we don’t have petrol here, we can produce fuel at a lower cost. One litre of fuel will cost five shekels (about 1.30 dollars).”

Now in its seventh year, the ‘Made in Palestine’ event was co-sponsored by the local Palestinian organisation Al Nayzak and the Swedish NGO Diakonia. Two exhibitions were held, one in Ramallah and one in the Gaza Strip, showcasing over 20 innovations in the fields of engineering, IT, biology and other sciences.

“It doesn’t only tackle science, innovation and technology; (the event) also addresses the idea of business entrepreneurship. We aim to create scientific entrepreneurs who are able to make and found businesses on those innovations that they’ve thought about and put into action,” explained Maha Thaher, international relations officer at Al Nayzak.

With offices in Gaza, Jerusalem and Ramallah, Al Nayzak aims to build a more vibrant scientific culture in Palestine, and encourage critical thinking and science education among Palestinian youth.

“We don’t want students to just avoid these subjects (until) they disappear from our community,” Thaher told IPS, adding that Palestinian students are endowed with a range of talents, which deserve to be nurtured, rather than ignored, by the education system.

“This is the one thing that occupation fails to seize and severely damage: we can (always) count on our minds, our intellect and our people,” she added.

Other innovations on display in Ramallah included a multi-tasking robot equipped with special wheels that allow it to move from left to right without turning, a cell phone application that helps users reserve library books in advance, and an onion planting machine.

Planting onion bulbs can be a tricky exercise, but this machine “plants the bulbs in exactly the right way”, explained inventor and local farmer Ibrahim Da’abes, who owns 100 dunams (nine square kilometres) of farmland in the Jordan Valley area of the West Bank and believes his machine will cut farming costs in half.

“The cost is much lower than employing workers to do it by hand. Bigger farmers would need this machine,” he told IPS.

At another booth, 20-year-old computer engineering student Rasha Saffarini, and her colleagues Isra’ Al-Qatow and Abdullah Al-Qatow, showcased their cell phone application that helps people reach a healthy weight.

Called ‘Healthy Gate’, the application asks users for various inputs – including current and ideal weight, age and food preferences – and sets alarms to alert them when, and what, they should eat throughout the day.

“Because of the difficulty of going to the gym, we make it easy for people to be their ideal weight,” said Saffarini, who is in her last year at the Palestine Technical University in Tulkarm, a city in the western West Bank.

Many of the participants of the ‘Made in Palestine’ fair were women. This, according to Thaher, highlights a growing acceptance within the Palestinian community of science education as a legitimate pursuit.

Families have generally been sceptical of the idea of their daughters pursuing dreams of making an important scientific invention or discovery, since this strays so far from the traditional path women are expected to walk.

“At times we had to go door-to-door and talk to parents about how they should let their daughters be involved in such programmes and build on their ideas,” Thaher said.

“But once the parents see their children so involved in this system that cares for their scientific approaches, they start to think differently themselves.”

According to Hamad, “Our families are very proud and so are we. We invented something new for Palestine.”

(END)