Akanyang is deaf and the product she is working on, the SolarAid, is the world's first and only sunlight-powered hearing aid — a breakthrough product developed and manufactured entirely in Botswana.

Last year, Akanyang took her first airplane trip — to Pretoria, South Africa, where she delivered, in sign language, Godisa's winning entry in the South African Design Excellence competition's medical category.

"I felt very tense and was forgetting my signs," she recalls of the competition, where she and a deaf co-worker were the only black women in attendance.

Godisa — which translates to "doing something to help others grow" in the Setswana language — is the only manufacturer of hearing aids in Africa and the only one in the world that involves deaf people in the manufacturing process.

Developed in Botswana with advisory support from World University Service of Canada, nearly 4,000 SolarAids have been sold in more than 30 countries.

In Brazil, Jordan and Pakistan, non-profit organizations are looking to develop their own versions of the SolarAid and have asked for Godisa's help in providing low-cost hearing aids for their workers.

Flying in the face of all sound business models, Godisa intends to transfer all its technologies for free.

"We're setting up competitors and we don't care," says Montrealer Howard Weinstein, a volunteer at the Motse Wa Badiri ("the village where people work") compound, which is supported by the Camphill international Christian-aid movement.

"Each project will ultimately help the less advantaged children in its region and enable them to be integrated into local schools."

According to World Health Organization estimates, more than 250 million people in developing countries are hearing impaired, often because of diseases that go untreated or because of uncontrolled noise pollution in many employment sectors.

Standard hearing aids sell for an average of $500 (all figures U.S.), putting them out of reach of most people in the developing world where government or aid groups do not subsidize their purchase.

Also, standard models are not built for conditions in sub-Saharan Africa, where heat and humidity affect performance, and batteries are expensive and hard to obtain.

The SolarAid — complete with solar charger and a package of four rechargeable batteries — sells for less than $100 and will last the consumer for at least two to three years.

A study conducted by University of Copenhagen audiologist Dr. Agnette Parving concluded that the SolarAid was comparable in performance to the much higher-priced, digital hearing aids produced in Europe.

To power SolarAid's rechargeable batteries — which are more environmentally friendly than disposable zinc hearing-aid batteries, 175 million of which are discarded every year — Godisa invented a solar-powered charger that's slightly larger than a computer mouse.

The unit is placed in the sun for six to eight hours while a solar cell recharges two special AA batteries that can keep their power for a week.

Once or twice a week, the consumer either puts the SolarAid in the charger or takes the batteries out to be charged separately overnight.

All parts for the hearing aid come from high-quality European suppliers and a special lacquer is applied to inside components to prevent humidity and sweat from corroding the unit.

Deaf technicians assemble all the imported components at the Godisa workshop, 40 kilometres south of the capital, Gaborone.

Last summer, after a 10-week training course at Microniks in Dorval, Que., Akanyang and two of her co-workers became certified instructors in electronic surface mounting soldering, which is second only to aerospace soldering in its complexity.

Besides teaching future Godisa staff, the technicians will also travel overseas to help replicate SolarAid's success at the new facilities to be set up in South America, the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent.

Godisa had no plans to patent the hearing aid and charger, intending to make the technology widely available and free to anyone. But the Botswana government wants to protect the innovation.

Explains Godisa general manager Modesta Nyirenda: "Because this is a 100 per cent Botswana product, the government would like to see it patented. This has to do with pride more than anything else.

"If royalties come in, we can share them with projects that help others.

"At the end of the day, however, the objective of Godisa remains to lower the barriers to better hearing for economically disadvantaged people."

By David Wightman
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