Low-tech

It's very low-tech.

With a candle-making machine and molds, invented in Rwanda, production costs are about two cents per candle. Candles imported from China cost about 10 cents each in Rwanda. So the economic advantages of this low-tech project are clear — and the Institute hopes these candles and other products will easily find a market in Rwanda.

Teachers and students at the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology in Rwanda's capital are working to identify and fulfill market needs. The school has a host of low-tech machines that make nails and other every-day items like candles.

Sometimes the low-tech ways are best: bash it with a rock, that'll loosen it.

The Automat, whose gleaming chrome-and-glass machines brought high-tech eating to a low-tech era, has gulped down its last coin and served up its last helping of macaroni, baked beans and kaiser rolls.

Many jihadist plots have been foiled and the security apparatus is getting better, overall, at pre-empting those who would do us ill. But, they say, the nature of the threat and the terrorists’ increasing use of low-tech, asymmetrical tactics such as hire vehicles and knives, make it all but impossible to stop every assault.

The control centre of the Shinkansen, the world's first high-speed railway, is surprisingly low-tech.