Stylish audio speakers made from gourds are one of several exciting new products to arise from a collaboration between students at the Royal College of Art and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi, Ghana.

This is the latest initiative of GoGlobal, established by Professor Tom Barker of the Royal College of Art in 2005, as a format for postgraduate international student group collaborations. After successful projects in Japan and China, the RCA decided to approach a university in Africa to set up a new project involving design and engineering students there.

KNUST has a wealth of experience in the use of traditional materials and designs to produce items for sale or use in socio-economic projects. So this fusion between it and RCA was sure to get some interesting results.

Using tools supplied by Tools for Self Reliance and locally available materials the students set to work for three weeks in May 2009 and came up with a whole range of products. These included audio speakers made from gourds, trainers fabricated using old inner tubes, laptop bags made by stitching together bicycle tyres and a 3D game that uses the traditional Ghanaian adinkra symbols as counters.

There has been so much interest in the project that it is now hoped to set up a micro-website so the items can be sold to a global audience, with all proceeds going to the students.