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Background information and problem. Transportation is crucial important for the society. Goods and service can be transported to the market. People need transportation tools to travel long distance tour. For most area, it is very normal that government provide public transportation system. But transportation is a big problem for some Africa countries. They are most developing countries and were colonies during WWII time. Their economy growth is very slow. Governments of these countries can not afford the basic transportation construction, especially for the rural remote areas. But Africa has a big advantage that there is a plenty of sunshine the whole year. Here is the climate statistic for Kenya. [] So we focus on designing a low-cost transportation tool—solar energy-motivated tricycle, which utilize the local natural solar energy without gasoline refill or other costly energies. It is a feasible solution for improve the local transportation.
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Target community: In order to narrow down our research for Africa undeveloped countries, we choose a typical country, Kenya, to present our design process.(the map of Kenya) Kenya is located east of Africa. The demographical number shows as far as January, 2009, the population of Kenya is 41,000,000. And here is the brief transportation introduction in Kenya. If we divide the whole number by 41,000,000, the transportation resource per capital is almost nothing.

Meanwhile, the population growth rate is 2% every year in Kenya. []

According to the data we get from Global Property Guide, as far as in year 2007, the GDP per capita of Kenya is $857. [] So we target to improve the low level transportation situation in rural area of Kenya, with a low-cost tricycle.

Inspirations: We get the inspiration from the lab two work, design for other 90%. Big Boda load-carrying bicycle, Q Drum and WorldBike Prototype. We want to design the tricycle a tool that can carry goods, meanwhile, “roll” the water with little manual energy. It is multi-functional which solve the clean water and transportation problem at the same time. (pictures of the three) [] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vk9GcG9EJzA&feature=related