THE ITBANK IDEA DESK
Find something worth building. Practical starting points for people who want to solve problems in Africa and around the world.
Explore 54 ideas ↓54 ideas
Make shared cooling equipment easier to schedule and maintain, while preserving food safety and fair access for small growers.
For: Farmer cooperatives, cold-room operators, produce traders and energy-service companies
Open the blueprint →Help households understand electricity outages, tariffs and service complaints through an operator-verified log that does not pretend to control the grid.
For: Community energy cooperatives, mini-grid operators and consumer associations
Open the blueprint →Support missed-visit follow-up through consented, low-detail reminders that complement qualified health staff rather than automating medical decisions.
For: Community health programmes, supervised health workers and clinic coordinators
Open the blueprint →Help buildings keep rainwater systems maintained by recording inspections, repairs and safe-use restrictions without claiming collected water is automatically drinkable.
For: Schools, community centres, facility managers and water-engineering partners
Open the blueprint →Explore a small catalogue that helps a museum organise selected objects and tell their stories responsibly. Begin with provenance questions and community permission, not a rush to put every collection online.
For: Community museums, heritage volunteers and cultural documentation teams
Open the blueprint →Test a small, maintained source of route-change notices for one transport corridor. Every update should name its source, show when it expires and distinguish confirmed information from a question.
For: Transport associations, commuters and local information publishers
Open the blueprint →Help people document which essential accounts they use and where official recovery instructions live. Keep passwords, recovery codes and identity documents out of the tool.
For: Households, digital inclusion trainers and community technology advisers
Open the blueprint →Test a better handover schedule for a group already qualified to handle donated food. Focus on confirmed collections, capacity and communication rather than opening an unmoderated food-sharing marketplace.
For: Established food redistribution organisations, donors and collection volunteers
Open the blueprint →Test a record-keeping system for a seed library that already has appropriate oversight. Keep labels, origin and uncertainty visible instead of presenting shared seeds as certified or universally suitable.
For: Community seed libraries, gardening groups and qualified agricultural advisers
Open the blueprint →Explore a practical checklist for returning devices and reviewing work-account access during a staff change. Start with an accountable owner for each system and keep private employee accounts outside the process.
For: Small-business owners, operations managers and authorised IT support staff
Open the blueprint →Test whether a small, well-managed pool of ordinary household tools is useful to a community. Start with an accountable custodian, a return routine and suitable equipment rather than an open peer-to-peer marketplace.
For: Community centres, residents’ associations and supervised maker spaces
Open the blueprint →Explore a clear way to turn confirmed orders into preparation tasks and pack-out checks. Test whether a shared view reduces missing items before building stock forecasting or a full restaurant system.
For: Small caterers, community kitchens and kitchen operations coordinators
Open the blueprint →