Turtle 1 Building a Car in Africa by W. Oosterbaan & J. van Onna

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Turtle 1 project shows the vitality of (Africa’s) informal economy with its self-taught and partially schooled ‘fundi’ (mechanics, carpenters, builders, welders)

Sociologist Joost van Onna and artist Melle Smets followed the trail of discarded Western car parts and ended up in a place called Suame Magazine in Ghana. Here the scrap parts are processed and marketed by some 200,000 highly specialized technicians in 12,000 informal workshops. Smets and Onna turded this trail completely around and produced together with the local mechanics of Suame magazine the first car to ever be exported from this African region to the West.

Lamu Town has few cars. Most transport is by donkey (over land) or by boat (over sea). Even though motorcycles are becoming more abundant every year. The old craft of building ships (dhow’s for instance) has not been forgotten. Turtle 1 project shows the vitality of (Africa’s) informal economy with its self-taught and partially schooled ‘fundi’ (mechanics, carpenters, builders, welders). The sky is the limit once one starts to dream impossible dreams. Being your own boss, working in your own workshop is fun as long as you have clients wanting to buy your product. Does Lamu really need a monster port or a new coalplant (the last innovation has luckily been cancelled in 2019) to ensure employment of its population or could the creativity mixed with entrepreneurschip and local technical skills bring some relief for environmental and employment issues?

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