We are a social innovation center. We host workshops, we teach and we support innovators.

Creative Capacity Building

We teach the design cycle of build-test-iterate, and participants learn through seeing examples of appropriate technologies, completing design challenges, and building one of our technologies with hand tools.

Jamii Tech Workshop

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Build It Workshops focus on teaching specific skills to participants. While all our offerings encourage creativity and problem-solving, these workshops are more specifically themed and result in building something specific. ​

Build it Workshops​

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Build it Workshops aim at educating about further development skills.

Why we do what we do

Many of the technologies that make their way to the Tanzania:
  1. are designed and manufactured abroad, leaving Tanzanians unable to repair their devices, especially when materials are not locally available. 
  2. are developed without a rich understanding of local needs and resources, often making them irrelevant or impractical. For example, any technology that requires electricity is useless for the 80+% of Tanzanian villagers who do not have access to or cannot afford electricity.
  3. are too expensive for the average Tanzanian.
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This leads to technologies that do not address the real needs here. 

OUR SOLUTION:

We believe collaborating with students and community members in Tanzania to identify their challenges and design & create their own solutions to their problems will contribute to a world with improved access to technologies that improve people’s lives, a stronger local economy, and a nation of innovators and problem-solvers.

Hence, we teach people how to create technologies that:
  1. address their own needs.
  2. utilize locally available materials, 
  3. are inexpensive and affordable,
  4. are able to be repaired locally.
  5. are designed with (not just for) communities & partners.
And we make some of our own as well.