Today’s Solutions: May 16, 2026

What if you live in a slum in one of Africa’s big cities and you can’t afford to buy a soccer ball?


Editors | Jan/Feb 2009 issue
 

Photo: Erik Hersman

What if you live in a slum in one of Africa’s big cities and you can’t afford to buy a soccer ball? You make one yourself, of course, tying plastic bags together with a piece of rope. This invention symbolizes the ethos of AfriGadget, a group blog devoted to using African ingenuity to solve everyday problems. This photograph was taken in Kibera, one of the continent’s largest slums, located in Nairobi, Kenya. It appears on the site with the words: “When you have nothing, anything is possible.”

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