On January 1 2013, a devastating fire swept in the New Year for people living in Khayelitsha, about 30 kilometers outside of Cape Town. Three separate fires engulfed nearly 1000 shacks as strong winds spread flames faster than members of the community could react.
“That was the impetus to start developing the technology and getting everything together,” said David Gluckman, the director of a social enterprise group based in Cape Town called Lumkani.
The team of six young social entrepreneurs aims to put an end to the slum fires that routinely destroy the property and lives of individuals living in informal settlements in South Africa. By distributing their technology-based early-warning device; a simple blue box equipped with two screws for mounting, a button and a flashing light, Lumkani increases security for those living in the community, supplying them with a bit more peace of mind.
According to Yolande Hendler, who works in the research and documentation department for the South African Slum Dwellers International Alliance, there are about 2700 informal settlements in South Africa, and 11% of South Africans live in an informal settlement.
The organisation, which has a partnership with Lumkani, aims to strengthen these communities through an approach that recognises that the residents are better suited than external actors to plan and implement solutions to challenges such as shack fires.
Hendler believes that the Lumkani device is unique in the sense that it promotes the community’s involvement in developing its own technical intervention, allowing community members agency in improving their own living conditions.
Because most cooking techniques in these environments require open flames and produce hazardous amount of smoke, traditional smoke detectors prove inappropriate and ineffective. Candles, contained fires in tin drums, paraffin stoves, and makeshift electricity connections also contribute to increased risks of fire, and even the materials such as wood, cardboard and plastic used to construct shacks are highly flammable.
In response to these obstacles, the Lumkani detector implements “rate-of-rise” temperature measurement to detect the probability of dangerous fires while limiting the occurrence of false alarms that will send the community into crisis-mode for naught.
“The value of partnering with the Lumkani team was Lumkani’s willingness to develop the device through a deep-participatory approach that values horizontal learning,” Hendler said. “This means inclusive design solutions and continuous innovation driven by testing and feedback.”
The South African SDI Alliance partnership with Lumkani is an example of what a proactive community intervention can achieve. The device has been crucial for sparing households from devastation.
“We have a number of stories from Khayelitsha where the critical early warning our device provides has mitigated the spread of fire completely in some cases,” Gluckman said. “We’ve actually stopped fires in their tracks.”
Stopping such disasters in their tracks makes all the difference in places like Khayelitsha, where population density poses major obstacles to containing the far-reaching impacts of tragedies like fires. Hundreds of families could be affected in the blink of an eye.
For this reason, all Lumkani detectors in households within a 60m radius are synced together, so when one device signals an alarm, the network of devices will warn the neighbours. This aspect allows community members more reaction time to quell the threat of fire before it becomes dangerous.
“There’s so many more alerts that we get before incidents become something to talk about or before they turn into any kind of a danger,” Gluckman said.
“We don’t get to hear the narrative around those stories, but they’re happening all the time.”
According to his calculations, since about 7000 households are equipped with the heat-detecting device and, on average, households use heat to prepare about two or three meals a day, Lumkani prevents about 21 000 possible incidences every day.
The Lumkani team has significant plans for enhancing its brand in the immediate future that go beyond increasing the number of devices they distribute. In addition to developing a response team to extinguish the fires detected by the device, Lumkani would hire people from the communities they are serving to be the first responders and to install devices in homes, generating job opportunities. They are also working on creating an insurance program so that in the case of a fire, device-holders could receive a payout for damages as well as assistance in returning to work and school in the aftermath.
“I don’t think people see social challenges in South Africa as any type of business opportunity,” said Gluckman.
“We see an opportunity here to challenge an issue which is totally avoidable.”
