Episode 25 - Bridging the Gap Between Idea and Prototype with Dr. Kamau Gachigi
Dr. Kamau Gachigi got tired of seeing brilliant Kenyan engineers leave the industry because they lacked resources.
That’s why he created Gearbox, a hardware accelerator and makerspace that trains, resources, and equips innovators in Kenya so they can turn ideas into physical reality.
In this episode, Dr. Kamau gives an overview of the fourth industrial revolution, and explains why the next Mark Zuckerbergs and Elon Musks are going to come from Kenya. Listen in as Dr. Kamau unpacks design thinking, practical strategies for local job creation, and what African innovators can share with the world.
Want to learn more about Gearbox? Check out Dr. Kamau’s Ted Talk and the Gearbox Website.
Episode Transcript
Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it.
Jacktone: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur Africa Podcast, where we spotlight the voices of entrepreneurs and innovators shaping the marketplace across the continent. This week we are featuring Kamau Gachigi. When Dr. Kamau Gachigi was teaching engineers at the University of Nairobi he noticed that the students and faculty were not able to pursue the creative potential of their ideas. The problem wasn't a lack of innovation. It was a lack of resources. The school had little equipment for building prototypes. So in 2009, Dr. Gachigi created a fabrication lab with computer controlled machines and tools for the public to use. Eventually, that idea morphed into the Nairobi prototyping facility Gearbox. This state of the art facility invites Kenyan entrepreneurs to utilize technology like 3D printing, laser cutting and electronic circuitry so they can turn the ideas into physical realities. He joins the show to talk about African innovation and bridging the gap from idea to prototype.
Efosa Ojomo: All right. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. My name's Efosa Ojomo. I am one of the co-hosts here of the Faith Driven Entrepreneur Africa podcast. And I've got with me as a co-host today my good brother, Frank. Frank, who you ask? Well, Frank, go ahead and tell him who you are real quick.
Frank: Now, first, it's so good to be here, so good to have the awesome privilege of being a part of this podcast for the very first time. We are missing Ndidi today, but it's always good to have another Nigerian still being on the podcast. So I'm Frank, I'm actually a Zimbabwean sitting with you and I'm part of the community team here at Faith Driven Entrepreneur and I'm based in Southern Africa and I love what God's doing on the continent and what he's doing with entrepreneurs and so, so chuffed to be able to join in this podcast today. Efoso where you're sitting.
Efosa Ojomo: Awesome, awesome. Well, I usually I'm sitting in Boston, Massachusetts, but today I'm in Portland, Oregon, and excited to be here with family. We have an incredible guest today. I'm convinced after you hear Dr Kamau story, you will be inspired. Inspired to build, inspired to create. Dr. Kamau, thank you for joining us today. It's a pleasure to have you on the show. We are super, super excited to talk about Gearbox and the work you're doing in Nairobi. But before we get into that, I want to ground us a little bit first. Maybe just tell us a little bit about who you are, Dr. Kamau, and how you came to do the work you're doing. Let's just start there.
Dr Kamau Gachigi: Yeah, sure. Thank you very much, Efosa, and thank you as well. Frank, it's a real pleasure to be on this podcast. It's also a distinct honor to be asked, and it's wonderful to hear you describe the work that we do here in Kenya. In those glowing terms. It makes us feel like it's worth what we're doing. But just to get right to your question, so I'm coming from a background of teaching at the University of Nairobi. I began teaching there about 1998, and I was teaching in engineering in 1999, actually, at the time that I was there, over the time that I was there, I was really excited about the talent, both the student body and also my fellow lecturers in terms of just people's understanding, having studied in the US, done my doctorate out there and so on, the level of intellect and so on. Within engineering, the engineering school was very, very impressive. However, the failure of the system to enable people to translate what it is they understand into solutions, which is what engineering is all about. That was what really bothered me because that just wasn't what a lot of people call a national innovation system, a system that allows or maybe audits the population for talent and is able to channel it through, you know, whatever institutions are available and whatever is happening in the private sector so that you can fairly seamlessly get ideas to be precipitated into products or machines that are required to solve problems. And so I set about trying to sort of set that up for the university. And one of the ways that can be done is by setting up what's called a science and technology park. Quite simply put, most universities want to set up their own Silicon Valley, if you like. And so I started doing that at the University of Nairobi, found that doing it from within the university was very limiting, especially because of the level of bureaucracy and a number of other things that we were experiencing.
Efosa Ojomo: Bureaucracy at a university. No.
Dr Kamau Gachigi: I know, I know. I know. I know.
Frank: I know like.
Dr Kamau Gachigi: This anonymous right is pretty much on anywhere in the world. Right. So, you know, it made more sense to step out and join forces with some people in a local hub that was focused around IT solutions, which we were speaking before we started recording about, you know, how exciting it is to have a lot of like, for example, fintech companies. People can create a software based solution to a problem quite easily and make some good money and have a good impact doing so. But we felt we needed to do this through hardware. So we we built up with a hub that dealt mostly with software type startups, but they recognized the need for some hardware and hardware angle to what they did as well. And we set up what we call Gearbox. And so that in a nutshell is really how we started. And maybe I can throw it back to you. Efosa.
Efosa Ojomo: Yeah. No, thank you. Thank you so much for telling us that. I love the just evolutionary nature of your story. Right? It wasn't like you were a kid and you were like, in 25 years, I'm going to build Gearbox. You were guided really by the problems you encountered in society, and that's what innovation is all about. But I want to get a bit more specific now. There is something you said in your TEDx talk. Now, if you've not listened to Dr. Kamau's TEDx Talk, I beg of you go listen to it. Well, after you listen to the podcast, of course, go go check it out. He got a standing ovation at the end of it. It's truly worth it. You talked about how the world is entering this fourth industrial revolution. Can you just maybe talk a little bit about what that means? Could that term gets thrown around a lot and and why that's important for the African entrepreneur or the average African. Really?
Dr Kamau Gachigi: Yeah, sure. So, I mean, we're all aware that technology in the modern age has been phenomenal in terms of the development that we enjoy. I mean, cell phones and all sorts of things that are part of part and parcel of daily life. But when you break it down historically, you're able to sort of identify distinct epochs, if you like. And so when steam energy was harness to develop mechanical power and machinery and so on, in the 1700s, that was the first industrial revolution. And then about 100 years later, electricity, you know, was discovered and was made use of and then we were able to do mass production and so on. And that's in the 1800s. Then you had the second industrial revolution. These of course happening in Europe. And then, of course, about 100 years later in 1969. So people like to say that was the birth of the digital revolution and you had the birth of the transistor and quickly thereafter you had personal computers coming on board and so on about a couple of decades later. And so now, barely 50 years on from that point. So you notice that the other industrial revolutions have a gap of 100 years between them, but about 50 years after that, which is pretty much now, we find that there's a merger of the digital revolution, all these others that I've described, and also very importantly, biotechnology, which is huge in terms not just of the pharmaceutical industry, which is in everybody's mind because of what's just been happening with COVID, but lots of other angles, biomimicry imitating nature because of how efficiently nature manages to do things. And so that merger of all of this and artificial intelligence, robotics and all these technologies, molecular biology, are what are being now described as a fourth industrial revolution. And it's very important for us on the continent, it's important for everybody. But on the continent, we're looking at the yawning gap, if I may say that's been stretching even before, you know, like since the African countries broadly got independence in the sixties. We've been playing catch up in a lot of ways, and we haven't got those national innovation systems that I've been mentioning earlier to be able to really harness what our own unique innovations and so on have been and make them relevant. And now we're having this hugely rapid pace of change. One person put it this way that technology has never changed as fast as it's changing right now in the history of man, and it's not likely to be this slow in the future again. In other words, that pace of change will carry on increasing. And so the question for us is how do we keep abreast of this? Is there ways in which we can leapfrog? And we have seen with cell phone technologies, for example, that we can leapfrog in certain ways. And looking for those angles is critical. And for me, that's why I would say it's very important to understand drive context, the context within which we are trying to do this nebulous thing called development.
Efosa Ojomo: Yeah. Wow. You know, you've I mean, that was about two, 3 minutes and you've just hit us with so much. First, you hit us with history. We started with mechanization. The first industrial revolution, electrification, the second digitization the third. Now we're sort of in the fourth experiencing it right now. And then when you connect that, right, all the advancements humans have made and how broadly speaking. Right. It's sobering. Africa has been left behind. If we are, to be honest, and I often say there's no progress without honesty. Africa, by and large, is to be left behind. The only major innovation I say we have across Africa is the mobile phone where the average African has access. Not every African, but the average. That's the only one that I'm aware of. I could be wrong. You're helping us see if we don't change course today or very soon, man. Not only are we going to continue to get left behind, but the distance is going to increase significantly. And that gets me to Gearbox right. So give us a bit of an overview of how you in your capacity are trying to solve that major problem because it's massive. Right. So tell us about Gearbox, how you're addressing this.
Dr Kamau Gachigi: Yeah. Thank you. So as I said earlier, as I spoke about the genesis I guess of Gearbox, how we came to be, we were looking in all contexts in Kenya. It was a time when we had developed and were enjoying, as you mentioned, mobile mobile phones were enjoying the advent of mobile money. So people were able to transfer money in ways that we had never imagined. And really, we were the first country in the world to really do it in the way that we were at that time, you know. And so we saw a lot of progress. A lot of the country that was unbanked was suddenly able to have a bank that carried around in their pocket and, you know, revolutionary. You know, I'm you're talking before that, you know, you're going to the bank. It's an event if you're coming from the rural area, you know, I mean, you have to pack up, you know, start the journey. And if you're too late and it turns out you have to be ready for accomodation, it might be three days, you know, so now it's in your pocket right. And there are these agents who is like the guy who had a shop down the road who now you can just go over to and withdraw money. So this is a massive revolution. And on the back of it, there were lots of fintech based technologies that came up, companies, startups that were many of them homegrown. So we were excited and we were saying, look, we've been here teaching engineering since independence and we know the kind of minds that are doing this and they're not enjoying this kind of opportunity. How can we make it possible? So the model that we picked was we said if anybody who's an engineer can make a prototype of the idea they have and be able to do even a small scale pilot in the marketplace and say, Hey, I tried this out, I built it, and I have ten people who like it and they are using it. And you show that to an investor. The chances for getting some positive response and even investment are much higher than what we normally do in Kenya. And it's true, I think in many African countries where you have exhibitions at the university, the other open day and like the president of the local government comes by and there are all these clever ideas being shown, but they all look pretty raw, you know, why is sticking out and so and they don't look like products they look like very clever innovations but no one's about to put any money into them. So everybody gets a pat on the back and there's a nice flowery language and zero investment, zero transfer into the market. And that's been historically where we've been stuck. And so people do their engineering and then they go for the jobs that pay. And typically you're coming from a rural area, from a poor background. You've studied really hard and you've gone into university and you're in a hurry to make some money. You have a lot of people behind you, your parents and your younger brothers and sisters. You have to start helping to support. You know, you don't have the luxury of a lot of the kids in in the West. You know, it's not just you and you. It's just you and everybody, your whole family. So, you know, if PWC see or one of these big audit firms is going to offer you a job and the first thing, you're wearing a suit to work. So you already look apart so culturally, just were not where we are historically, it's attractive. You know, people want to look like the successful. Then you get a car loan before you know it and a home loan. So a lot of people who our governments are spending a lot of money to educate in engineering are ending up in banks and auditing firms. You know, the auditing firms at the University of Nairobi were very clear. They'd come to the dean every year and say, look, the first stop for recruitment is engineering departments, because the engineers make really good auditors because of the way they've been trained and what have you. And so you're looking at an abortion of purpose. I mean, if you are the Minister of Industrialization, there's an abortion of purpose, if you are the Minister of Education. You sit down together, the two of you, and say, Look, I'm putting all this money. Tax being the money to educate these guys. You're waiting for them to set up industries. And, you know, the tragedy is that if you look at the number of engineers per capita in most African countries, they're way below the benchmark. And, you know, if you want to benchmark with Malaysia, Vietnam and these kinds of countries, South Korea, they have so many more engineers per capital. And so we're way below. But even that small number of engineers we have cannot be absorbed by the industry that we've got. And so you have this very strange irony, you know, so people are not going to carry on in engineering. So it's a long story. But the point I'm making is that we said if we can enable these guys at Gearbox to have access to equipment, to have access to design tools, design thinking, and how to sort of optimally use all these tools to create the solutions of prototypes. And then they can stay there. Because if I'm at a university, I'm a student and I want to use the machines and at 6 p.m. I'm not done. I want to carry on innovating. There's a guard who's coming around with a bunch of keys that say, Hey, time to get out. I have to lock the door. Little things like that are hindering innovation. So like we had huge problems at the University of Nairobi because of that, you know, the guard has to lock the room and, you know, for innovation, you need rigor people should be able to sleep in the lab all night if necessary, to get it done. So, you know, this is what we were making available. And so Gearbox was created to make it easier for people to do that.
Frank: Wow. That's incredible. And it's just dark. You know, you really hit home. I've got an accounting background, so I understand what it means to wear a suit and seemingly look important. So I can't agree with you more, especially as Africans, how that view and how your parents are so proud of you when you walk out there with a laptop and a suit. And so I can really attest to that and relate to that. And I really love your overview of Gearbox and just what you're doing. And so, you know, it sounds like an incredible model that you've come up with. I think some people could hear the word prototype and what you were talking about, and they think of this low quality product, like a stick figure drawing of an eventual masterpiece. But that's not what Gearbox does. People that work in your lab gain access to highly sophisticated machinery and equipped to build incredible things. Do you mind just giving our audience an idea of what you've seen developed at Gearbox and what they're working with?
Dr Kamau Gachigi: Well, yeah. I mean, you know, you put it well, but I still would not sort of undervalue the picture. You paint it of the stick type prototype that is still very much with things start, you know, it could be cardboard, it could be paper. And we still do that. But you're right, there are tools that are available to make that a lot more sophisticated. You have 3D printing, for example, which is a rapid prototyping tool so that, you know, if you have an idea in the morning, by the end of the day, you could actually have what we call the looks like and works like prototype, you know, at least a looks like a prototype. And so the stick prototype doesn't look like the product, the final product. But, you know, if you could make it the such that it not just looks like but also works like what you want and intend, then that from an engineering perspective and product development or product realization perspective is very important. But we've had a number of things. So one of the things we're very proud of is a lot of people on our campus will make machines that are in the class of machines called Computer Numerical Control or CMC for short. So what they are is machines that maybe they're milling or there's a laser cutter or some kind of what we call end defect or something that's changing the shape of some raw material exactly as the drawing that you've created on the computer has defined it so that it's an automated machining tool. And this is entry level robotics, if you like, and it's very, very important for industrialization. We talked about mass production, we talked about robotics and so on. So we have people who are able to make those machines, plasma cutters, wood routers, laser cutters, 3D printers, they're all part of that class. And we're making them not just for fun, we're making them for business. So local business people who need these machines to say, for example, take sheet metal and then make out of the sheet metal, maybe some kind of a shape that's part of a machine. It could be like the housing of a fridge, you know, the also you can picture your fridge. It has the mechanics in it. It has the internal parts that are molded plastics, it has shelves and stuff like that. And then you have the metal outer. So the metal outer could be made first using a plasma cutter or a laser cutter, and then you can have it bent into the shape that you require. Then then you are able to paint it using methods like powder coating, which gives you that very nice finish. And so all these methods are available and they're fairly basic. You know, it's basic in terms of engineering, they're not extremely fancy methods. But the important thing is that people can do very quickly what they need to do in this space. We also have more exciting stuff that's more like high tech. People have made drones. People have made this one guy, a guy and a young lady who he's an AI expert, but she's a electronics expert. And what they did is because his niece was born deaf and mute and so he was inspired to create a solution for her. And so he created a system whereby whoever is deaf will wear the gloves that have sensors on every fingers. And then as they do the sign language, the electrical signals that are generated from the finger movement are converted into words using artificial intelligence. And so you. And pick a voice on your phone, male or female, using his app, and then your phone as you sign language speaks out everything that you're signing. And so this you know, we have a partnership with the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. And every year, they hold a competition for all of Africa in Kenya, with Gearbox being one of the hosts. And, you know, so they won some years back and that took them to the U.S. They also won a competition that's done by the British Royal Academy of Engineering. So, you know, that company is now off and running and it's unique in the world. They hadn't been such a development as far as we could tell at that point. And we've got somebody who designed a solar cell on a roof tile, which is what Elon Musk is also doing. But our sort of ethos is not necessarily to do the fancy stuff, is to do what is required in the marketplace. We want people to start generating jobs locally. So import substitution is an economic theory in terms of how things can be arranged for a country to develop economically is very important and for us. And so we're going after hospital beds, we're going after, you know, trolleys for the hospital. We're going after, you know, things that are very mundane, not necessarily the sexiest things from the point of view of technology. But we know that if the government in particular, which is the biggest consumer in any country, can be compelled to give that business locally, then you're not exporting jobs. You have jobs that are being generated locally. And so our focus is on that more than anything.
Frank: Oh, that's fantastic. I mean, Doc, I just love that story of these people just coming together and creating this thing that allows people to be able to communicate and change the lives of a family. And obviously, you know, the outpouring effects of innovation and how it helps nations out of poverty is quite a key thing that we discussed, especially in Africa, seeing the states that a lot of our countries are in and we want to make it better. We want to see the betterment of African people. And one of those ways is just the innovation that you've just spoken about and what Gearbox is doing. Do you have any other examples or things that you can say of the ripple effects that have come from the services that you've provided as Gearbox? Any other examples of that?
Dr Kamau Gachigi: So let me sort of frame this answer in terms of like the kind of structure that we created and the kinds of technologies that we focused on very early on because of the fourth Industrial Revolution, we realized we have to be able to do circuitry and circuitry together with coding is critically important for control systems, for systems that are, you know, sort of able to respond to the environment. And so as a consequence of the amount of skill that we built up in the people who use gearbox and the capacity, we attracted a company from the UK that was interested in getting into electronic money factories in Africa. As it happens, you know, it was a most interesting thing at the very first meeting. I wasn't able to make it. I had to cancel because of ill. And so in the next meeting that we had, the first thing that the chairman of that company said to me is, can I pray for you? Because I heard you were ill. And so it was a faith driven organization out of the UK, which is great. But what happened anyway is that they set up a manufacturing plant in our premises in partnership with us, so we have a joint venture with them. So and this is, I think, very important when we're not looking to just host countries or companies from outside which will come and take advantage of our markets, which really will provide employment. Yes, but we want ownership by Africans in our countries. And so we're really pleased with the arrangement that we have with them. And so now we're able to do circuitry. And so we're looking at very unique technologies that are quite unique to our part of the world, like pay as you go. So you have somebody who designed a system that would allow people to have gas, who cannot afford gas normally and for cooking. And the way that this happens, that we don't have piped gas to the homes, but this is really effectively the same thing. So they deliver to your humble abode, you know, which is unfortunately the common type of housing for a lot of us in urban areas and African countries. They deliver the gas cylinder. It is not yours. It sits in your house and there's a special regulator that has technology in it. And so when you pay, you know, you pay using mobile money. The server at the telco sends a signal to this regulator for the valve to open for a certain period of time, which has been designed to be long enough for you to cook. And so the amount is like $0.50 US or $1 us, and you cook. And so if you do this every day for about a year, you actually then own the cooker, but the gas cylinder will continue to be provided as you need it. And then there's an edge over the middle class because when your gas cylinder is below, they have a sensor so they can tell. So you get a call that says, Hey, it looks like your gas is low. We want to bring you a replacement and you need some eggs and milk as well. So it's a very interesting, you know, Trojan horse, kind of a business model. And so this is now enabled a lot of people to cook with gas in their homes who previously were using charcoal. Paraffin and other kinds of energy sources that are typically not very clean, very expensive and so on. So this pay as you go. Technology is something that we're able to create the circuits for because we now have the factory for circuitry or surface mount technology, as we call it. And so because you can't call up China and say they'll send me a couple of these circuits, they don't exist. Right. So it's an empowering thing. And we're seeing it for solar power. People have like over a million homes have gotten solar power because of this type of pay as you go because you're paying little bits every day. And, you know, it's the human centered design aspect is very critical because and this is very important for people who are designing engineering solutions to really understand the problem, really look at who's going to use it and what do they need. And so, you know, that design thinking showed that a typical poor person cannot afford, say, $30 at the end of the month in a lump sum, but they can afford a dollar a day. So it's the same amount of money is just the way the budget works about in that level. Yeah. And so now that technology allows you to spend just a dollar a day to get what it is that you need. So solar has not impacted Africa since it was invented in the seventies, even though we have the most sun coverage because people couldn't afford the capital outlay. So these technologies are enabling that, which is very exciting.
Frank: Oh, that's fantastic, doc. Geez that's really exciting. Especially about the gas thing because of power outages on our continent. It's very innovative. But just quickly, as we move on, I just want to yeah, there's one member who produced a product that ended up in the hands of Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg. Can you tell us a little bit of that story? Very interested to hear that.
Dr Kamau Gachigi: Well, yeah. So Mark Zuckerberg visited Kenya and Nigeria at some point. And while he was in Kenya, he came by Gearbox and then Ihub and some of the other places. And I got a chance to meet him and I was presenting to him two of the technologies I've already mentioned. One is the gas technology I just mentioned, and then the other one was the solar cell in a roof tile, which is very similar to what that is exactly the same as what Elon Musk and his company, Tesla, is pushing. So, you know, we always joke saying, you know, we did it before he did. We haven't really looked at the.
Frank: The timelines exactly of.
Dr Kamau Gachigi: What he did, what. Yeah, you know, but it's nice to be able to say that. And then it sort of highlights the fact that if it was in a country where the national innovation system was mature, then this young African engineer and its sister, who's an architect who came up with it would probably be doing very well. Yeah, but because we're not as mature that way, then they haven't really grown at anywhere close to the level that Tesla is able to provide those roof tile solar cells.
Frank: Yeah. Now but if, if Elon Musk ever gets a chance to listen to this podcast, it'd be great to team up with us here in Africa, considering he is from Pretoria, South. To get some Kenyan infusion there as well.
Dr Kamau Gachigi: Well interesting thing or I could just quickly interject, one of Tesla's best engineers when it was building is a young Kenyan called Charly Mwangi. And Charlie spent quite a few years working there. And his team built one of the biggest factories, most modern factories in California for automobile making a Tesla factory. And he was heading up about a couple of hundred engineers under him. And when he left the Tesla, he was reporting directly to Elon Musk. And so Charly is very much in touch with us. He was actually in there and we talk to him all the time. And he left Tesla. He joined Travis Kalanick, the founder of Uber, to set up a new cloud kitchen startup in California. And then he left that. He joined Rivian and he was a vice president for engineering at Rivian, and now he's a general partner at a fund called the Eclipse Fund. And he's looking very much to focus some of that money because they have about $500 billion that they want to put into hardware based companies. And some of it should come to Africa. So, you know, nobody's that far away. You know, we could reach Elon through him very easy.
Frank: Elon's listening.
Efosa Ojomo: Wow. Now, this is truly, truly fascinating. I loved it. Just hearing these stories and what started out again, just going back to the beginning. Right. What started out as you going back to serve the country, teach at a university and just really asking the hard questions, right. Like, Oh, I'm going to teach all these students. They're brilliant. They're amazing. But the truth of the matter is, if I'm honest with myself, there is a cap, there's a limit on how much they can create, how much they can advance. And I have to solve that problem. So I have to ask, you know, we are a faith driven entrepreneur podcast, after all. So I have to ask because, you know, not every one, not every professor, right? Not everyone in Africa leans into the difficulty. And when I hear about your story, Dr. K, you really have qualities that resonate with what we call the marks of a Faith Driven Entrepreneur. I mean, the scripture says, you know, we are the salt and light of the world. And, you know, I just get the sense that you represent that to the people that you serve. So I got to ask, you know, do you see your work as ministry and how does faith influence what you do?
Dr Kamau Gachigi: Yeah, I'm so happy to have that question because I often feel a strong need to give glory to God because and very honestly. So I'm not saying it as some kind of a you know, what people just sort of say as a meme or something. I truly mean it because I've seen the hand of God in what we've built, what we build. What I focus on very much is the young people and just giving them the platform. So every young person who comes to me or calls me, I make sure I listen very intently. To what? Because, you know, the innovations come in in a package called a human, you know, warm bodied soft tissue package. So if you're looking for it out there on the Internet and so on, yes, that is part of it. But, you know, you have to listen to these young people and you have no idea what they're going to tell you before they speak. So I made it a principle of what I do to really give them time and also to give them the sort of platform to grow the classes and this and that. And in the process, the most important thing I mean, we could all, you know, become the most we can get into the fifth Industrial Revolution and become the wealthiest continent in the world and all go to hell. Right? So, I mean, it's not about technology and it's not about finance. It's about people's hearts, it's about salvation. So in a sort of a careful way, that's what we focus on. Ultimately, we talk, we you know, I have relationships with a lot of people and try to make the culture at our platform faith based without being too overtly. So we got a lot of our funding from actually the Amazon Foundation, which is right there in Portland where you are Efosa And, you know, there are certain things, you know, the way the world works nowadays, you know, you cannot profess these things too publicly. You have you have to be a sly as a serpent right as you're trying to conduct these things. So we're quite careful, but we're really hopeful that we're in a gorilla mode with our evangelism and so on and trying to build people, but it's never far from our hearts. And really a lot of the successes we've enjoyed. I mean, it's been up and down. You know, there's times when we go without salary, we're almost closing the doors, but it never gets to that point. It always somehow we're always sort of pulled up out of the problem. And even right now we're transitioning. So the funding that we've enjoyed for the last seven years has come to an end this very month, not next month. And so we have two companies we've set up there is one I just mentioned for the electronics manufacturer. There's another one we call Machine Africa Network of Industries. It's a for profits. And these two companies use Gearbox as a pipeline and then they give back to Gearbox. So we're trying to transition to a model that makes this work. You know, we modeled ourselves as Gearbox on something called TechShop out of the U.S. at the beginning. And it had a model very much like a gym. So you pay a membership, you can come and use the machines, you get instruction on how to use the machines. You sign up for what you're going to use, make sure you don't hurt yourself or anybody else and don't damage the equipment. And that's kind of the mode. And then we realized very quickly, we don't have the disposable income that the Americans have. People can pay, you know, $100 a month for this membership, you know, unless they really know what they're doing and they're going to make money out of it. So we had to transition our model to teaching and then they come, they pay us to learn, and then we give them assignments that make sure they end up with innovations. And so those are some of the things we had to adjust. And TechShop in the US folded.
Efosa Ojomo: So wow.
Dr Kamau Gachigi: This model work is not obvious. If you don't have a government that's funding you or something, then it becomes.
Efosa Ojomo: Yeah, absolutely, you need a lot of resources. I just saw an index that said the average Kenyan would have to spend 63% of their income per year. The annual income and the new iPhone 14. The only country that spends a little more on the index I saw was Nigeria, which is 69%. So clearly this model is going to be difficult to replicate. Let me pass it over to my brother, Frank, to take you through what's called the Lightning Round. Doctor K, don't be scared. Don't be scared. But we're going to we're going to need to like lightning back to back to back. So. So, Frank, come on, now. Take it home.
Dr Kamau Gachigi: Hit me. Hit me
Frank: Yes, yes, doc. Thanks Efosa, as I say, lightning round. We love this round because we just give you a question and you just need to answer it for about 30 seconds only. And so what's something you miss about living abroad and where did you live, actually?
Dr Kamau Gachigi: All right. So I lived in Europe. I lived in the North America. I lived in Japan and in each place more than about three years. And what I would say I miss is just the convenience of things sort of working like clockwork, just the ease of doing simple things that, you know, the continents are quite hard to do and sort of systems that work and plug and play, that kind of thing is probably the only thing I missed.
Frank: Oh, fantastic. Great. Next question. What is the one thing you saw prototyped that just didn't make it into the production phase?
Dr Kamau Gachigi: Oh, there's so many. I mean, what makes it to the production phase is the minority. Actually, I can point to a device that was designed to help pregnant women, particularly in rural areas, not have to travel long distances, you know, for the fetal heart rate to be monitored, which is one important indicator. And so they had a device that the woman could have in her home, and she just sort of pressed it against her stomach. And then the heart rate is sort of lifted to the cloud. And then the doctor can tell you from a distance what's going on and what isn't going on. And the model for who owns this device and who pays for it was what didn't work. But I still think there's a solution out there.
Frank: Oh, great. Next question. What could global engineers learn from those in Africa?
Dr Kamau Gachigi: We're always encouraging our local people to be authentic. And we know that the model that we all follow isn't necessarily the only one. There's a lot of we reach back into African history, though, about the way things were done that were very interesting, especially like around herbs and so on and around, you know, even, you know, open brain surgery in western Kenya. You know, there's videos showing of it being done in the traditional setting. And so that's encouraging. And so we're trying to tell people to be authentic and so we don't play catch up. We can lead for sure in our own ways. And so my pain's always to speak to young people about just being authentic and allowing whatever insight to come out is, is God given and I believe that when that really starts to happen at scale, then the whole world will be awed. But even more than that is the Christian base. If we can now overlay the Christian based because we know all ideas come from God, I think there's going to be shockers coming through.
Frank: Wow. Wow, fantastic. One more question, doc. If Gearbox had been around, when you're a student, what would you have built?
Dr Kamau Gachigi: You know what? I'm a materials engineer myself or material scientists. And so I sort of work around processes for converting, let's say, ores or various kinds of powders and so on into products. And I think I would work because I was doing electro ceramics. That's what I did at my PhD, which is in the circuits on all kinds of devices. A lot of them are made out of ceramics that have really interesting types of properties. I think somewhere in that space of device design around materials is what I have worked on. But the Gearbox would have to have evolved a little more than it is right now to make that possible. But along those lines, that's where I would be doing most of my tinkering.
Frank: Oh, fantastic doc. Well done for the quick responses.
Efosa Ojomo: Look, I feel like we could keep talking for another 3 hours, but we have to end it here. I know. I would just. Yeah, I know, man. It's just amazing to hear you talking. You've got that voice, doc. I don't know if you ever heard. If you're. If you are teaching and gearbox doesn't work out, you need to go into radio. I mean, I could just listen to you and you're like, Oh, my God.
Frank: Anyway, I agree. I agree.
Dr Kamau Gachigi: Like you said.
Efosa Ojomo: But one last question, which I think is important, because you never know who this is going to touch is in your faith journey. What is God teaching you right now, whether it's through his word and experience, through fellowship or worship with people? What is he teaching you and telling you right now doc?
Dr Kamau Gachigi: You know Efosa, if I recently I was invited by the military in Kenya and that's something we could have talked about it because you say we had more time, but they wanted me to give them a talk. They had the military generals and the top brass from about 14 countries would come into Kenya. And so I was giving them a talk on science and technology. And one of the generals in Kenya asked me, you know, pretty much the same question. He said, what? What keeps you awake at night? And I said to him, That's really easy, general. It might not be the most appropriate setting, but I'm a Christian and I feel that about ready for Jesus to come back, because the Bible says that those who believe will be followed by signs and wonders, and I'm not seeing the signs and wonders, you know, following me. So I'm scared that I'm not where I should be. And so I'm really working hard at connecting more deeply, hearing God's voice. And I want to understand what are the gifts in me that, you know, I know that his fingerprints are all over what I've been able to do, but I feel that probably I mean, it's part of it. But I want to be able to heal people, Jesus, to heal people through me, that is. And that sort of level and to hear God clearly. So working on humility, especially in the death to self. I was talking to somebody else today and she says she has a friend who has that on her. What's up, death to self? And I was like, Yes, I need to learn how to really die. And that's what I really am focusing on right now. Hmm.
Efosa Ojomo: Wow. Well, thank you. Thank you very much. Doc, death to self. This has been and reaching for me and I'm sure for my brother Frank as well. And definitely to the thousands and tens of thousands of people who are going to listen to your story. Thank you for sharing with us your most precious resource time. We deeply appreciate it. And yeah, we will. I have to meet you now, so I got to figure out a way to get to Kenya to meet you. So there you go.
Dr Kamau Gachigi: I was thinking Oh, I was thinking the same thing.
Frank: Likewise, I missed that. Both the Efosa, I missed that boat last week, so I need to get back on it.
Dr Kamau Gachigi: Absolutely guys and it's been really enjoyable. Thank you so much for having me on. I truly appreciate it.
