Who’s the clever one then?

Submitted by Terry White

I was doodling through my favourite website, Wikipedia, and I came across an article on “National IQ”. In 2006, Dr Richard Lynn and Dr Tatu Vanhanen published a book called IQ and Global Inequality. In the book they list the average IQs of 185 nations and make an argument that international differences in current economic development are due in part, to differences in average national intelligence as measured by average national IQ.

Apart from the fact that the basis of the research has been pilloried, what drew my attention was the ranking of African countries. You guessed it, African countries are all at the bottom of the order. This set me on another tack: I know of so many examples of clever things being done in Africa that I can’t believe that Africans lack intelligence. The average South African can speak about five different languages (I can speak but two). I also question the norms being applied to the definitions of intelligence, but that’s another subject that I won’t go into.

However, in thinking about IQ and Africa, I started looking at innovations in Africa and came across a wonderful website called www.afrigadget.com. This is a site to get lost in for a few hours: It details innovations made by Africans which made me sit back in wonder.

Like the walking electricity generator invented by Dr Cedrick Ngalande. Basically this is a pair of dynamos covered in protective rubber and dragged along the ground behind you. You walk (and Africans walk a lot) the dynamos turn, and you generate about 2 watts of electricity – enough to power your mobile phone.

Or the lady who became so disillusioned with her mobile phone charger, that she bought five normal batteries, dismantled her charger, and attached its terminals to the batteries connected in series. And her phone was charged.

How about the kid in Mombasa, Kenya, with no formal electronics training, who had invented a car immobiliser that can operate remotely. He uses a combination of voice, DTMF (dual-tone multi-frequency) and SMS technology over normal mobile phone networks in such a way that you can disable your car’s ignition from anywhere on the network. Another feature of the system is the capacity to poll the vehicle owner by mobile phone for permission to start when the ignition is turned, as well as eavesdrop on conversation in the vehicle … (hmmm, not sure about that).

There also the introduction of overhead wire bridges, which allow threatened Colobus monkeys to cross busy Kenyan roads in safety. Roadkill of the endangered Colobus monkey is a serious problem. Now 80% of the monkeys use the bridges. Admittedly the Australians use similar bridges for their Koala bears.

In Africa there is a definite need to save on cooking fuel – it is expensive, either in terms of time and labour to collect wood, or in the conventional sense of bought fuel. So in Kibera, Kenya, there is a communal cooking facility that is powered by garbage. Rubbish is burned at 930 degrees Fahrenheit (thereby incinerating most toxins) and the heat is used to power the community cookers. This solves two problems of course: waste disposal and cooking fuel.

Connected to the cooking issue, is the time it takes to boil beans until they are soft. But African innovators have discovered that banana-leaf ash, mixed with water, tenderises beans before cooking and reduces cooking time by 50%.

The SODIS (solar water disinfection) system allows locals to disinfect their drinking water using nothing more that UV rays from the sun. Clear plastic bottles are filled to three quarters, shaken rigorously for twenty seconds to oxygenate the water, topped up and left in the sun for six hours. The combination of oxygen and UV treatment does the disinfecting. And sun is what we Africans have a lot of.

But my favourite innovation is the Hero-Rat project. In Mozambique, giant cane rats (about the size of a terrier) have been trained to sniff out land-mines. The rats are guided by a long pole with a leash attached. They are light enough so they don’t set off the mines. When they find one, they are rewarded with a bit of banana. As the writer of the article said: “Would that our politicians were so clever and would work for bananas.”

So back to the question of intelligence in Africa. I’ve cited many other examples of technology being used in ingenious ways in previous articles. I don’t doubt African intelligence (which is defined as the introduction of something new and useful). And if all the so-called intelligence of bankers in developed countries has created the current world economic crisis, I’ll go for African intelligence any day.

White is a director at MarketWorks Advisory. He advises CIOs and non-IT executives and has authored three books on IT management