With their continuing mission to bring industrial innovation and entrepreneurship to the developing world GE Africa brought its travelling GE Garage to Nigeria for three weeks.
GE Garages are travelling maker spaces socked with the latest in manufacturing and prototyping technology. The concept was introduced in 2012 as a US program with the goal of reigniting the spirit of American innovation and invention. But GE has decided to take their garage concept global, and their first stop was Lagos, Nigeria.
Starting on June 24th and wrapping up on July 11th, the GE Garage in Lagos hosted over five hundred Nigerian entrepreneurs, inventors, students, small business owners and government officials. Everyone was invited to use the garages fully stocked selection of 3D printers, CNC machines, laser cutters, injection molders and computers with the latest design programs free of charge.
While the Garage is generally more of a showcase for modern technology, business tools and manufacturing techniques, in the Lagos garage the staff technicians and several budding entrepreneurs ended up collaborating with each other to develop and fine tune several of their inventions. Including a teenager who was developing a method of using urine to power a light, and create clean water. In an area where rolling blackouts are everyday occurrences, that technology could completely change the entire community.
“This experience has been transformative.” said Saheed Adepoju, a local entrepreneur who developed Nigeria’s first tablet computer “I have had the opportunity to use world-class facilities such as 3D printers to develop my prototype. I have also met with different people in the industry.”
There is an excruciatingly long history of Europe and the US meddling in the development of Africa, and most of that history paints us in a very poor light. So it’s easy to dismiss programs like these as marketing, creating new markets to sell their products or just a large business scouring the developing world for the innovations that the West isn’t producing any longer. Corporations rarely do anything without a profit motive behind them. And while that may have some truth to it, it does not change the fact that programs like these can truly be transformative to developing regions.
Whatever the motive may be, 3D printing has the potential to make real, lasting changes in places like Lagos, and it’s doing it by giving Nigerians access to the tools and technology to make those changes on their own terms.
You can learn more about the GE Garage program and find out where their next stop is here.
