Last night (16/5/13) while we slept in Zambia, there were celebrations going in Wilmington, Delaware, USA at the DuPont Packaging Innovation Awards. This morning we learnt that we’d won the top prize (Diamond) and we also won in the ‘Food Security’ category. It was great that our colleague, Rohit Ramchandani, was there and met up [...]
ColaLife Cairo to Cape Town Cyclists pass through Zambia
25 April 2013 by Leave a Comment
Before the excitement of Product Design of the Year award took over our lives, it was lovely to play host to two amazing people – Ali and Lizzie – as they cycled through Zambia on their way from Cairo to Cape Town. Their target is to raise £10,000 for three charities which mean a lot [...]
Kit Yamoyo wins Product Design of the Year 2013
10 April 2013 by 4 Comments
I’ve just got back from the field, with so many stories to tell and pictures to show, to the news that ColaLife’s Kit Yamoyo has won the Product category of the Designs of the Year 2013. The maverick in me thinks it’s fantastic that something designed with the poor and for the poor, and with the word [...]
Riot in Katete
6 April 2013 by 6 Comments
On Wednesday night (3/4/13) night when I sat down, with mosquitos buzzing around my ears, and posted Setting up for an exciting few days in Katete, little did I know what kind of ‘excitement’ that would turn out to be. All the plans were in place to give the ColaLife Cairo to Cape Town cyclists [...]
Setting up for an exciting few days in Katete
3 April 2013 by Leave a Comment
It felt like a weekend this morning as I packed my cycling stuff, put the bike rack and bike on the back of the Land Rover and set off on a six-hour drive across Zambia. But I was in fact going to work. Three hours into the drive I got a call from a number [...]
Our concept for the distribution of medicines by rural retailers plays out in real life
23 March 2013 by 4 Comments
In November 2012 the rural health centres in Kalomo District in Zambia had not received ORS for several months due to a lack of stock at national level. In January, I visited one of these health centres and asked the Clinical Officer in charge if she’d received any ORS yet. She said they had received [...]
Trailer for ColaLife Documentary released
9 March 2013 by Leave a Comment
Here it is, the 60 sec trailer for The Cola Road, the 40 minute documentary on ColaLife. The filmaker, Claire Ward, describes the film as follows: For years, it has baffled visitors to developing countries: Coca-Cola is everywhere, but basic medicines are not. This year, Zambia has become the first African country to embrace ColaLife, an [...]
Could the private sector supply remote rural health posts in Zambia?
8 March 2013 by 2 Comments
Back in June (27/6/12), on our first visit to see Zambia’s Minister of Health, the Hon Dr Kasonde, to brief him on ColaLife, he asked us to consider how some of the thinking behind ColaLife could be applied to the problem of supplying Health Posts. Health Posts are the first level of contact between the [...]
Question of the month . . .
28 February 2013 by 8 Comments
. . . what are these four men doing up a tree on the top of an ant hill in rural Kalomo, Zambia? Answers in the comments please! Images by Charlotte Mwanza
Where are the Kit Yamoyos? Production and sales to 25 Jan 2013 [corrected on 3 Mar 2013]
4 February 2013 by 2 Comments
From a standing start in mid September 2012, when no one knew what a Kit Yamoyo anti-diarrhoea kit was, rural retailers in the remote parts of two districts of Zambia have bought 13,730 kits (an average of 106 per day). To feed this demand wholesalers have bought 20,650 and our pharmaceutical partner, Pharmanova have manufactured [...]
