When The Togo based makerspace WoeLab Presented the W.Afate project to build a 3D printer using E-Waste from some of the largest dumps of old computer and electronic equipment it sent ripples through the entire 3D printing and global community. I even used it as a topic for my very first article on Il Fatto Quotidiano, my favorite newspaper in Italy (unfortunately it was also the last one since they published it but never paid me).
Beyond the crowd funding success on Ulule and the inspiring concept of recycling E-waste to build a future in Africa, WoeLab is an impressive collective effort that goes to show once more how 3D printing can unite people and yes, democratize, manufacturing. It is becoming increasingly clear that additive technologies, especially the desktop, maker ones, take hold much faster where there is less competition form a more established industrial landscape.
Togo, a relatively small “stick-lie” nation bordering Ghana in West Africa, is proving to be a great place for WoeLab to grow. “One point that is important for us at WoeLab is that W.Afate, like everything developed in WoeLab, is achieved collaboratively”, Sénamé Koffi, the lab’s founder and catalyst told me. “Our entire community – he continued – has been involved from the beginning and helped develop the project. Indeed W.Afate is one of the very first African-symbols of the contemporary ‘Commons’ movement which is developing around the world and which has – this is the intuition behind everything we do in Togo – echoed in our African traditions.”
In the wake of the successful W.Afate project, which was recognized by the first place Global Fab Award at Fab10 in Barcelona last July, WoeLab has been working on more community-centric projects such as the very interesting portal 3DprinTogo. Along with masterfully playing with the name Togo, the service wants to map and create a network of CyberCafè’s allowing them to integrate 3D printing services through the W.Afate 3D printers.
For WoeLab it is also about spreading the 3D printing culture and helping Africa to be at the center of the ongoing distributed, personal manufacturing revolution. “All the thirty young residents who benefit now from the WoeLab program are equally involved in the 3D printer in e-waste project,” Koffi explained. “The self explanatory philosophies described as ‘LowHighTech’, ‘Technology Democracy’ and our original social model are the keys of WoeLab’s success.
The Lab now wants to spread this knowledge to more people through its 3DPrintEducaTogo. Its plan of action is to contribute to spreading the knowledge of 3D printing to all African people, starting from Togo’s capital city of Lomè, which today is one of the cities with the highest technology awareness penetration rates. The challenge for WoLab is to push Africa to not miss the boat with this new, more environmentally aware, industrial revolution. It may mean a lot to Africa and perhaps even more to the rest of the world.
