Can icecairo sustain a maker movement in Egypt, with government help?
Egypt’s political situation isn’t discouraging budding green
entrepreneurs. If anything, the revolutionary spirit may have
encouraged young entrepreneurs to collaborate more.
Since it launched
this past November, co-working space icecairo is building a reputation for
being one of the few places that Egypt’s entrepreneurs can go to
build products and innovate sustainable concepts. Under the
guidance of Mohammed Radwan, a self-described “vagabond” industrial
engineer, and his co-founder Adam Molineux-Berry, the long-time
director of Cairo’s Design Emporium, the space hopes to "solve
environmental and social challenges” despite the financial
challenges of being an independent organization in today’s
Egypt.
I've known Radwan for five years, but it never seemed obvious that
he’d make the leap from highly-regarded local activist to
entrepreneur, although he has all of the qualities of both: he’s
intensely driven, takes risks, has passion, and wants to make an
impact. His first crack at his own business was a t-shirt company
with revolutionary slogans and graffiti-inspired designs that he
sells mostly to friends.
Now, when he’s not attending protests–or boycotting them for ideological differences–he’s known for his social media savvy, which he uses for Nawaya, a group that promotes sustainable agriculture and social justice for Egypt’s rural poor.
In 2012, when Radwan met Molineux-Berry through Nawaya, the two
leaders saw an opportunity to take their activism into the business
sphere. Molineux-Berry had been in discussions with the founders of
iceaddis, who were interested in launching a similar project in
Cairo. When its main sponsor, GIZ, took an interest, the two
founders launched the space in November, gaining support from the
Egyptian government to build a fabrication laboratory, or “fablab,”
stocked with industrial machines on loan.
By hosting networking and training events- on topics like
photovoltaic installation and parametric design- right in the heart
of downtown Cairo, across from the café-lined borsa area,
icecairo has quickly built a loyal following.
“Icecairo is bringing together people from different backgrounds
and even different nationalities who have the same way of thinking
when it comes to the environment and sustainability,” says Hossam
el Zayat, CEO of the solar panel startup Sunergy.
An electrical engineering student at Cairo University also said that networking opportunities lead him to icecairo.
“I have a lot of projects that I want to work on and I’m going
to go green on them,” says Majid El-Tayeb. “But there’s a lot of
things I don’t know and I’m going to collaborate with people from
icecairo.”
The space’s major challenge moving forward won’t be convincing the
community to embrace change, but rather, carving out a financial
framework. The organization is officially registered as a limited
liability company (LLC) based on a social entrepreneurship
model.
“We wanted to be independent and we also wanted to be a not-for-profit business, but there’s no framework for that in Egypt,” Radwan says. “The closest are NGOs and co-ops, but both of these have so much legal structures [sic], red tape and bureaucracy that it stops their work.”
When the GIZ funding runs out, it will need collect enough fees for services such as the co-working space and fab lab to remain sustainable. This presents a particular challenge because many young people can’t pay.
“We don’t want our end users, which are Egyptian youths, to be bearing the cost of these services while they’re trying to become entrepreneurs, we decided to approach companies to sponsor these coworkers,” Radwan says.
The cost of using machinery is still prohibitively expensive for many, but trainings in the fablab have become more frequent. The laser cutter has been used to make a few products such as an LED lighting kit with an Islamic design, Christmas ornaments, coasters and signs.
“We would like to be a maker movement,” Radwan says. “Thus the fablab running is huge.”
Radwan also hopes that icecairo will become self-organized with
a virtual space that allows members of the community to give their
own workshops, along with an open source forum where members can
disseminate knowledge. Already, an NGO is using icecairo’s
blueprints for building a solar water heater in order to host
trainings and start manufacturing heaters.
Becoming a decentralized organization will involve streamlining the
hub’s current processes, and yet Radwan is adamant that this shift
will spur effective change.
“We would like to be open source and collaborate on projects,” he says. “Hoarding a product to yourself often leads to inaction.”