TED Talks Daily - This refrigerator is saving lives | Norah Magero

Episode Date: December 10, 2024

TED Fellow and renewable energy expert Norah Magero envisions an Africa that pioneers its own technological future, shifting the narrative from dependence and consumption to self-reliance and innovation. She shares how she developed VacciBox — a solar-powered refrigeration system made in Kenya to keep vaccines cold in off-grid areas — and highlights the power of homegrown solutions to transform health care.

You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hwu. Today's talk is from our brand new batch of 2024 TED Fellows films adapted for podcasts just for our TED Talks daily listeners like you. The Ted Fellows program supports a network of global innovators and we are so excited to share their work with you.

Today, we would like you to meet mechanical engineer Nora Maguero. A lot of technology and innovation is pouring into Africa, but from abroad. Nora Maguero wants to solve problems in her home country of Kenya, but by understanding what the communities on the ground actually need. She shares how she figured out a homegrown tech solution that better served people locally than something from the outside, and that she hopes will pave the way for more manufacturing on the continent. After we hear

from Nora, stick around for her conversation with Ted Fellows program director, Lily James Olds. This is all coming up after the break. Support for the show comes from Airbnb. As 2024 comes to a close, I've been reflecting on my travels this past year. And of course, the highlights include several great Airbnb stays you've heard me mention Palm Springs, Sedona, Tokyo. In 2025, perhaps it's the year I finally host on Airbnb. With the amount of time I spend away from home, it just seems like the practical thing to do. I love the idea of looking back this time next year

having hosted several great stays and enjoying the extra income I saved. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.ca slash host. At Radiolab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But, but we do also like to get into other kinds of stories. Stories about policing or politics, country music, hockey, sex of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we

bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers and hopefully make you see the world anew. Radiolab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know wherever you get your podcasts. And now our TED Talk of the Day. Frequent blackouts is pretty common in Kenya. It's quite common in towns like Makindu that are 100, 200 kilometers away from the capital. When I moved there, we'd have several blackouts, whether it's several times a day or even several times a week or even week-long blackouts that just made it really difficult to do some things that I thought were basic.

As a mom, I thought I'm going to pump a lot of milk and store it, I'll just rush to the clinic and get the vaccine, but that wasn't really a guarantee in Makindu. My name is Nora Magera. I am an engineer, a mechanical engineer, and I run a company called DropAccess. We manufacture solar-powered refrigerators and cold-chain technologies that are used within the healthcare sector. There has been quite a number of people who have come up with alternatives for access to power. These are the private sector players, like companies that are able to fundraise abroad for causes within the African continent.

They build the case, they get the financing, then they bring the solutions to these communities. But the thing about these solutions is that they're not all that entirely reliable. These solutions are provided by 90% foreigners. These foreigners possibly get the information from online sources and some documented research work.

How do you do your research? I do my research by literally going to the communities to find out what's the actual problem. And I do it this way because I had the road awakening that the research work that is published out there, even from some reputable organizations, are actually not accurate. And it's guiding solutions that are coming into the continent, and we're getting it all wrong. I've seen a lot of technologies and solutions

coming into the Kenya ecosystem that don't really respect the culture, that does not take time to understand what the people really want. So I remassed myself into that community to find out, like, what's the actual problem and what do people want? So I remassed myself into that community to find out like what's the actual problem and what do people want. So I started dealing with farmers, I started dealing with communities and homes and I discovered that those

demand for cold chain solutions, solar powered cold chain solution. So working with farmers, having my own experience with not finding vaccines for my child really just gave me the push to think of bringing in solar refrigeration that can be used in the healthcare sector. Refrigeration is not something really new. It's not something complex. You know, I understand refrigerator as an engineer and I thought I need to get down as an engineer and design something that fixes all these things. And that's just how Vaxbox came to be. We built a lot of things from scratch

and we built it over a lot of challenges and difficulties. And I just kept on pushing at it, kept on talking about it, insisting that we are going to manufacture this in Kenya. When everybody else was like, go manufacture it in China, you know, China's already figured it out. But why are you doing it here?

We don't do this here because most of our technologies actually do come from abroad. And there's a perception that when it's built in Kenya, it won't perform as the ones that are being brought in from abroad. And I try to tell them, hey, we need to do this here so that we get to figure out how does it serve the Maasai communities or communities in Makindu or the communities in Western Kenya, and also how does it adhere to the layers of what our communities want.

And I think all that is hard to put into perspective. Hence, that's why people find it crazy that I do this in Kenya. But then I got into this journey of designing, building Vaxibox and demonstrating to the world like, look, we store vaccines. This vaccine did not spoil. And actually, this child who was vaccinated is alive and well, and it wasn't compromised in any way. I've seen a lot of foreign startups

who are coming into Kenya to found companies, to build a name for themselves, and to have this pride that I went into the African continent, I went into Kenya and fixed their problem. I'm bothered by that. I want Africa to develop its own technologies. I want Africa to have its own manufacturing ecosystem because it creates jobs. There are a lot of compounding impacts with manufacturing. Our communities are so deeply layered and cultured. Modern engineering intertwines all technology

with these layers of our community and respects it and thinks of the people first and what their culture says and what they want or what works well for them. We should no longer be considered as the lesser continent. So much of the rest of the world thinks that Africa should only consume and that's what we are accustomed to. But what if we switch the narrative a bit and have technology being imported from Africa to the world?

We should be on the equal playing field when it comes to engineering and manufacturing and economies and creating jobs for people. That's the Africa to me that I want to see. see. That was Nora Maguero, a 2024 Ted Fellow. Stick around after the break to hear Nora go deeper into her work. And now a special conversation between Ted Fellow, Nora Maguero

and Ted Fellow's program director, Lily James Old. Hi, Nora. Welcome. Hi, Lily. Thank you for hosting me today. I'm so excited to have this conversation with you. So you make such a compelling case for why more manufacturing should take place on the continent. Can you share a bit of what you learned in the process of this

people-first approach to engineering and manufacturing Vaxibbox in Kenya? So Lily, I think my learnings started from my own experience as after I completed School of Mechanical Engineering from University of Nairobi and I realized that I wasn't really getting the jobs that I thought I would actually get within the industries and also within the manufacturing ecosystem in Kenya. And I wasn't really the only one, even my classmates and even the people who'd studied mechanical engineering earlier on didn't really have jobs.

So I had to get down to delving deeper into manufacturing and especially with the locally made technologies like Vaxibox because when we started doing this job, I realized that I'd created so many job opportunities for other engineers who would have otherwise gone without getting jobs. But then also I saw literally how manufacturing is creating better economies for a lot of people. There's a time where I witnessed a small market mushroom near the workshop, where we're manufacturing Vaxibox.

There was a woman who used to sell bananas. Then soon she started bringing foodstuff. And then it just turned into a small market. And the people who are working at the workshop will actually buy the foods from her and even more people. And I just saw how manufacturing creates micro economies that bloom into even bigger economies. So I feel like they're much more compounding benefits and even what I've seen when we locally manufacture technologies. looming to even bigger economies. So I feel like they're much more compounding benefits

and even what I've seen when we locally manufacture technologies and beyond even creating these jobs for people and also economies, we get to really get the technology that we deserve. If I look at the story of Vaxibox and how it was built to encompass the life of a Maasai nomadic community

that is working from one point to the other, but still have access to vaccine. I feel like locally manufacturing these technologies put the people first at core, and we totally get to address the specific needs of what these people want. Absolutely. And how has Vaxeebox been received by people, both the users and other entrepreneurs?

So Lily, at first it was quite worrying because people are very skeptical about Vaxibox. They used to look at it like it's a locally made technology here in Kenya. So there was a lot of mistrust and skepticism of whether it's going to work. And it makes sense. A lot of technologies are not really made in Kenya. So here we are telling local nurses that, hey, we made a vaccine fridge and we want you to put the vaccines in there. They're scared. They thought it would electrocute them or it was going to explode overnight. And eventually they started testing it out by putting food, then water, then other antibiotics.

And eventually they graduated to actually putting vaccines in there. So there has been growth in, what can I say, appreciation for Vaxbox being a locally made technology. And now I see even more nurses and more healthcare workers demanding our solution because it fits them better compared to other solutions in the market. And then also we provide a very quick maintenance service since it's a locally made technology. So we've really served a lot of communities

in Kenya and beyond. And you use the phrase moral engineering when talking about your approach, which I think is really fascinating. Can you explain what does this mean to you and why do you think it's so important in your work? At the core, moral engineering to me is making technologies that truly address the needs of people first

beyond the markets and beyond revenue generation. Mostly from experience working within the climate change space, with the technology space, I've seen technologies that have been brought to the market just so that people get to raise money for them or even people get to test and prove a point or even to brag that they're able to build a technology that is helping some Africans. And to me, I feel that's really, really unfair. They're really deep-seated problems and challenges that we face in the continent. And I feel like when we go down to making technologies, they should address these

challenges first, beyond our human desire to be glorified or even to earn much more than what we deserve. And let's think about the revenue generation later. And I know in a practical work that might not really make sense, but what if we try? Because I feel like there are already so many challenges in the world, and if we put markets first and revenue generation first, we'll never really get anywhere. Like how many times do we get equipment that are not really fit for our own purpose? If you look at women fashion and something as sanitary towels, sometimes you wonder, was this actually made for women or who actually made this equipment?

Even rules and regulations, you wonder who actually came up with this kind of technology. So I feel like moral engineering puts account of the users and just ensure that they're incorporated in the design, in the development, in how they're being rolled out so that their needs are addressed first. Right. Well, and it sounds from what you said before, it sounds like people needed to really gain trust to believe and then understand that Vaxibox could do just for them, if not better than the other technologies. Yeah, it is. I guess with that in mind, what is needed to continue to grow manufacturing and technology in more industries on the continent

so that, as you say, we switch the narrative and that Africa becomes a main player exporting its technology to the world. First of all, we need the world to realize that Africa can equally be a technology play-maker globally. So we need the people who make this kind of technology, or even who've made advancement technologies, to be able to share with us the ways, you know, teachers provide capacity development for so many Africans through education or any the ways, you know, teachers provide capacity development for so many Africans through education or any other ways, how we can actually leapfrog technology development in the continent.

Other countries and continents are far much ahead when it comes to technology development. And Africa doesn't have to start from scratch. We can actually have technology and knowledge transfer. And it can be done in a way where nobody loses their IP. And even some I know they're already open source. Other people were willing to be done in a way where nobody loses their IP. Some I know they're already open source. Other people were willing to be intentional in sharing this. I feel like the world needs to be much more open and very cognitive that Africa can be a technology playmaker. But then also there needs to be much more financing for these. For industries

to be set up, for manufacturing industries, there's a big cost that needs to be incurred. So governments need to really, really rally for more funds. And also to help with capacity development, the universities that have already figured out the whole technology manufacturing processes, they can actually share the coursework or they can train and help to build the curriculum so that even African universities can equally just build the capacities of young people to leapfrog us into a technology playmaker globally. But beyond that, we need much more intentional acknowledgement that Africa has a lot of challenges and we just have to ensure that we sort them out together globally.

We can't actually do this alone. And I'm talking about all the minerals that are being mined within the continent that can equally be processed in the continent. That's building technologies. Like we can share that process. Like if part of it can be made here and maybe part of it process elsewhere,

like why not? It's been done before, yeah. Yeah, I love that vision so much. And if someone listening wants to dive deeper into these topics that you're speaking about Yeah, I love that vision so much. And if someone listening wants to dive deeper into these topics that you're speaking about around technology, manufacturing on the continent, what are some resources you'd recommend to them in terms of what has been an inspiration to you? A book, a podcast, other resources? Well, I know there has been a lot of case studies even done by the World Bank on what it means for Africa to develop its own manufacturing capacity and what that will translate into building better economies

and GDPs for the various African countries. So the ready publicly available resources from the likes of World Bank. And if we can even look at the story of Aliko Dagote from Nigeria and what is actually done to the Nigerian economy, beyond being literally the richest African, still he built that wealth and has created so many jobs for people through manufacturing. I feel like that's such a very good example of what manufacturing can do for the continent.

Beyond creating the revenues, the many jobs that you can actually create and even placing Africa in the global scene that we can actually manufacture technologies and even materials and equipment within the continent. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Nora.

It's been a real treat to get to speak with you today. Thank you so much. Support for the show comes from Airbnb. As 2024 comes to a close, I've been reflecting on my travels this past year. And of course, the highlights include several great Airbnb stays you've heard me mention. Palm Springs, Sedona, Tokyo. In 2025, perhaps it's the year I finally host on Airbnb.

With the amount of time I spend away from home, it just seems like the practical thing to do. I love the idea of looking back this time next year, having hosted several great stays and enjoying the extra income I saved. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.ca slash host. To learn more about the Ted Fellows program and watch all of the Ted Fellows films, go to fellows.ted.com. And that's it for today.

TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Autumn Thompson, and Alejandra Salazar. It was mixed by Christopher Faisy-Bogan. Additional support from Emma Topner and Daniela Valerezo. I'm Elise Hue. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feet. Thanks for listening. PRX.