‘Foroba Yelen’ is a conference paper recording the case study led by Hall of a design enterprise project in Mali that investigated how designers can co-design and develop portable, sustainable solar lighting for remote off-grid Malian villages and how this can ultimately assist in an overall national-level strategy for slowing the rural urban migration patterns of West Africa. The project had a positive impact on the local community by enabling sustainable local lighting that helped maintain cultural practices, encouraged enterprise and facilitated education. The lights would be rented out by villagers and profits used to construct new lights designed to use locally sourced materials, construction techniques and components.
The research builds on existing expertise of cross-cultural collaboration by the lead author (Hall 2009; Hall 2010; Hall 2012; Hall 2013), and describes the technical and cultural challenges faced by designers working in this challenging context – in particular, the challenge of whether to use imported or locally sourced technologies, locating suitable making processes and issues of deploying co-design methods across cultures.
Impact is demonstrated by improvements in the social life of villages through public lighting as part of a strategy for slowing the rural–urban migration patterns and helping to maintain food production in the countryside. New knowledge, including methods for sustainable development, communication by remote design teams and design pedagogy, is presented in practice-related activities by designers in international collaborations. The range of project communications was mapped and diagrams generated to identify the most successful remote communication platforms. Following the project completion, the work was exhibited at the Royal College of Art (2011) and featured in three articles in Lighting Design (2012), Axis (2012) and New Design (2012). The project was funded by the eLand Foundation in Switzerland, Nakumatt Holdings in Kenya and Philips Lighting in Holland.