Deconstructing Product Design

MoneyMaker Pump

Martin Fisher, Nick Moon, and KickStart, 1991

1. While the percentage of the world’s population living on less than $1 per day halved between 1981 – 2001, sub-Saharan Africa was the one region that did not participate in this positive trend. The situation in Africa is believed by many to be so extreme that its people are too poor to work their way out of poverty. Many economists believe the only option is to fight this degree of poverty with charity — a lot of charity — on the order of trillions of dollars a year. The people at KickStart have a different theory: sell people, however poor, the tools they need to make money, and then get out of the way. Martin Fisher comments: “Eighty percent of the poor people in Africa are ...