(A column highlighting scientific, technological, engineering and design innovation in Africa)
BRCK is a wireless, battery-powered modem that allows access to the Internet even in the absence of electricity. Billed as “your backup generator to the Internet,” it was created in Kenya by Ushahidi Inc., (Kiswahili for “testimony” or “witness”), a nonprofit technology company that builds software and digital devices.
This project came about when Ushahidi founders-engineers Juliana Rotich, Ory Okolloh and David Kobia of Kenya, and Erik Hersman, who was raised in Kenya and Sudan, built a crowdsourced mapping platform as a response to the Internet media crash that occurred during the 2008 presidential election in Kenya. The engineers realized that in order to facilitate information flow consistently, they needed to create a device that would maintain Internet connectivity in any situation.
The BRCK, so named because it is a small, lightweight box that resembles a brick, was created with 16 gigabytes of memory, a battery life of eight hours, and the ability to support up to 20 devices in multiple rooms. “It works like a mobile phone, intelligently and seamlessly switching between Ethernet, Wifi Bridge, and 3/4G connection whenever the user’s preferred network is down. Plug in a SIM card — the same card that measures the minutes of talk and megabytes of data for a phone — and with its 8-hour battery the BRCK provides a fully functioning network anytime and anywhere in reach of cell service,” Ushahidi says in a statement..
Ushahidi raised money for the BRCK through a Kickstarter campaign that brought in more than $65,000 in the first five days.
In order to give back to the local community, Ushahidi established Ihub, an innovation center in Nairobi where the tech community collaborates using the company’s software. Beyond Kenya, Award-winning Ushadihi software has been used in relief response in Haiti and Japan to locate citizens in need during natural disasters, and elsewhere in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, South America, and the United States.
