David Li

Conversation

• Open source discussion - leveraging talent
• Example - Ghana person - made a biodigester production ready.
• Open source in china is driven not by philosophy, but by necesssity. Getting to know people is easy.
• Strength of China is engineering and design -
• Not traditional outsourcing - Taiwan, Korea, HK, Singapore - in 70s and 80s. This is more accessible in China.
• Cutting out the middleman - if there is a sufficient local need - production follows.
• A lot of manufacturers of Shenzhen are doing manufacturing in Africa. If global - easier in China.
• Kenya as an example - customs tax is 10% in Kenya, vs import from China is 35% for fully assembled. If disassemble - then it's 10% import.
• Chinese companies joint venture with Kenyan companies.
• Work with Kenyan Chinese
• McKenzie report - comprehensive report on the scale of private investment in Africa
• Why doesn't Alex Socolof hire China to teach builds of tractors. $3k EV - shipping is $800. Import tax is 100% of vehicle. Tata is $3k. About $8k.
• Different countries have different regulation. 10% import duties.
• Africa is like China 30 years ago - government officials were accessible.
• Opportunity to go electric.
• For tractors it's not who has access to government officials - there are already rules to increase innovation in China.
• Couple of partners in Ghana, industrial part. Money is in real estate.
• Available manual labor - FAO - Smallholder Farm - target is smallholder farm.
• 80% of all agriculture land is smallholder farms.
• Red tape is there in China.
• Ghana is quite entrepreneurial.
• Ghana for heavy machinery - Accra is not heavy industry - Kemashu is heavy machinery. They are also the garage of West Africa. Used cars get fixed up there. Huge used car industry. Kemashi Hive - entrepreneurship hub. Big garage culture.
• Lots of old cars end up there.
• In USA, about 50% of all farmland is smallholder farm?
• In USA, farmers are one of the highest suicide rates in the world. According to a recent article.
• Trump country - the smallholder farm - less than 20 hectares
• Bigger farmers are less susceptible to suicide -
• Industrial farms in Europe will probably go out of business. Smallholder in Europe will do better.
• Narrative for agriculture.
• TroTro factory - Uber for tractors

Action

• Smallholder farm - labor is a short supply
• Chinese factories are becoming smaller. SHenzhen has 200k factories.
• The farm village - knowledge is pretty open. Even in village scale - 5000 e-commerce shops. 2000 factories - 50,000 people village. Everyone does some part of supply chain.
• Agrarian into industrial - in 1700s, noncompete was unknown. Very competitive. In initial stage, there were many companies. Or even Fairchild semiconductor - spawned 1000s of companies in Silicon Valley.
• Cooperation - Fab Village. Invited projects to develop and test stuff. Feb 19.

Trend

David is, like Bold by Diamandis, calling for crowd sourcing and crowdfunding. On top, he calls for open source - but it is not clear whether he supports OSHWA compliant, collaborative design, or more the flavor of Academic Open Source with high barriers to entry.

Notes

• Article on DIY and professional build services in China. Also, white label and gongkai. Critique of Bunnies Huang. Questions - how to convert this to open source, not proprietary consortia of Gongkai? The key is open source design at the component level - not proprietary parts. This can enhance closed loop production cycles. Recycling of parts in Shenzhen is good, though. Concentrated open-ish network vs distributed manufacturing. 85% of electronics are made in China. Not distributed - [1]

Links

• Atelier Paysan (french ag machine co-op): - https://www.latelierpaysan.org/English
• https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/making-adapting-sharing-fabricating-open-source-agricultural-tools/2018/07/06
• Shanzhai (the chinese "open source"):

https://app.additor.io/p/w6JjNDkS#5919dc65499c573415eafa42