East African Power Industry Convention

We are attending the EAPIC as Safari Park courtesy of George Njenga at  General Electric. The keynote address is being delivered by Achim Steiner, the Executive Director of United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP). He highlights the challenges faced by African countries. In Kenya, where electrification hovers around 15% of the population and 4% in rural areas, he says “………….more women die of smoke related illnesses than do of Malaria and tuberculosis combined”. This smoke is from cooking and lighting fuels.

Our work goes towards lowering the exposure of women and children, by far the most vulnerable demographic when it comes to indoor air. Lighting is a first step and the Solantern serves an incredibly valuable role in lowering indoor air pollution. However, a lot of work still must be done on the cooking fuel front.

Sun King lantern recognized as the Best lantern

Our lantern won first place out of a pool of entrants from 29 countries in the global Solar for All Design Contest, an industry-wide search for the most innovative businesses that provide sustainable, reliable energy to off-grid communities.

The initiative is supported by a consortium of more than 50 of the world’s leading organizations working in the field of energy access for the poor, including Ashoka, Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation, the Canopus Foundation, the elea Foundation, the Fraunhofer Institute, the Lemelson Foundation, and the Woodcock Foundation.

This win comes close on the heels of our success with Lighting Africa’s 2010 Outstanding Product Awards in May, and combined with your support, fuels our motivation to light up millions of families still living in darkness.

We continue to brighten peoples lives with a lantern that is exceptionally well designed with great technology and at a price that everyone can afford.

Joseph Nganga, C.E.O., presents at Africa Gathering in Nairobi on the Solantern.

Joseph Nganga – The Solar Lantern from Africa Gathering on Vimeo.

Update on Tambuzi and Mukuri Primary School

So, Maggie Hobbs at Tambuzi Flower Farm, working with Rosier Trust and some concerned parents at St. Margaret’s School in the UK donated 35 solanterns to Mukuri Primary school.

A few weeks later, Maggie visited the school to see how the students were doing. It is amazing to see the amount of homework that kids are now doing at home. The students are now using solar lanterns that provide quality light that is safe, affordable and non polluting to do their homework every evening as evidenced by the homework diary below.

And the school keeps the solar panels in a secure office, collects the lanterns from the standard 8 students every morning, charges them throughout the day, and send the lanterns fully charged, with the students in the evening.

Such an elegant and affordable solution that will keep paying dividends. Truly, Maggie at Tambuzi, Rosier Life Trust and parents at St. Margaret’s School having given the Students at Mukuri Primary School a gift that keeps on giving.

Tambuzi Flower Farm brightens Childrens’ Future through Solanterns

Maggie Hobbs of Tambuzi Flower Farms has been searching for ways to support the community around Tambuzi.

She understands that education is one of the best ways to end the cycle of poverty. And yet, for standard 8 students at Mukuri Primary School which is located

near Tambuzi Farms, when darkness falls every night, they must close their books and go to bed. This means that while their counterparts in electrified parts of the country are studying hard for the life defining standard 8 exams, children at Mukuri are at an enormous disadvantage.

That no longer needs to be the case. Maggie at Tambuzi enlisted the help of a donors, the Rosier Life Trust and some concerned parents at St. Margaret’s School in the UK, to purchase 25 lanterns for the standard 8 candidates and 10 lanterns for their teachers.

According to Maggie ” The lamps will remain the property of the school and will be handed on to the next year’s group of candidates in January 2011.

The pupils will also be given Homework diaries. These will show the homework given and be signed by the parents to show that the homework has been done and how much time has been spent.”

Our lanterns just won the best task light award at the just concluded IFC and World Bank’s Lighting Africa conference. For the standard 8 students at Mukuri Primary School, this means that they are using the best possible solar lanterns to study and prepare for the all important standard 8 exams.

Maggie at Tambuzi Flowers and the donors in the meantime, are planning on how to make more lanterns available to more students at Mukuri Primary School.

Solar Lanterns presented to Mukuri Primary School

Creating jobs while providing clean energy

Muigai is 22yr old young man. He is smart, knows his neighbourhood and is responsible. He is also the first of many siblings. And being from a single parent home, and the mother currently working as a casual laboring, there is increasing pressure for him to help provide for the family.

Yet jobs are hard to find and those that are available pay hardly enough money for him to support himself, let alone his siblings.

Fortunately, Muigai has secured a loan from a philanthrocapitalist. He borrowed ksh. 40,000.00 and purchased 20 lanterns. Each night, he rents out the lanterns for ksh. 15 each to the various households in his neighborhood. These households were spending a similar amount of money for kerosene from the local kiosk every night. The lanterns are so popular that he has a waiting list of others who would like to rent. They cannot afford the ksh. 2,000 needed to purchase a lantern outright, so they are happy to rent for their daily use.

Since he knows the neighbors, and they all own small plots of land where they live and do subsistence farming, there is little risk of loss. Additionally, by renting out the lantern but retaining the solar charger, Muigai ensures that the lantern will be brought back in the morning for more charging.

The terms on his loan are 10% interest and 36 months. His monthly payment is ksh. 1,290.69. With an income of ksh. 9,000 per month ( ksh. 15/ lantern X 20 lanterns X 30 days a month), he is netting ksh. 7,709.31 per month. And after three years, the loan will be paid off and all he’ll have to invest in is 20 replacement batteries at ksh. 200 each.

To put a ksh. 7,709.31 monthly income in relative terms, the starting salary for a primary school teach in Kenya is ksh. 9,750.

So, by working with entreprenuers such as Muigai, we can provide clean energy to rural households at prices and terms that they are comfortable with and are currently paying. Additionally, we can provide employment to the youth in Kenya who currently constitute over 60% of the population, and not just any employment but employment that empowers them while providing them with a livable wage. And we can achieve all this in an economically sustainable way – not through hand outs and subsidies.

If you would like to know how you can help achieve these goals, please contact us.

So what does a ksh. 2,000 investment in a solar lantern mean to a household?

When we talk to rural households about purchasing our solar lantern for ksh. 2,000, the first reaction is “that is a lot of money!” So we did some market calculations:

A typical kerosene lantern consumes about ksh. 10 worth of parafin per night. A hurricane lantern which is larger, consumes about ksh. 20 per night. So conservatively, a family spends ksh. 2,000 in kerosene every 200 days.

Put another way, the solar lantern will last for 3 yrs before the battery needs replacing. So every year, the cost of the lantern is ksh. 667. That compared to ksh. 10 per night on kerosene means that a family ends up spending ksh. 3,650 per year on kerosene lighting. This is being very conservative because even after three years, the only thing that needs replacing is the battery for between ksh. 300 and ksh. 400. So in reality, the annualized cost of a solar lantern is indeed lower than ksh. 600 relative to the ksh. 3,650.

And while we are on price and economics, there is a lot to be said for the rural families not being susceptible to price fluctuations of kerosene based on global oil prices, local supply dynamics etc.

Kenya’s Govenment should ban kerosene lanterns

Last night, I attended a dinner hosted by ABC -K, the biogas contractors association.

One of the key guests said many interesting things, but one that really stood out was that if the Government of Kenya can ban smoking in all public buildings and withing public spaces, why would it let the average poor citizen in Kenya, continue to gather around a kerosene lantern, with the dark smoke perfectly visibly wafting into the women and children’s lungs every night in the name of doing homework or household chores. He made a radical recommendation that kerosene lanterns should be banned in homes. But it is not such a radical recommendation if we consider the fact that there exists a much cleaner, safer, more affordable and now locally available solution – the solar lantern.

Granted, several challenges exist in disceminating the lanterns particularly in rural households. But it is for this very reason that something as radical and as large scale as a ban on kerosene lantern is the way to go, the way to create change rapidly. And such change is incredibly necessary for our children, who should not be subjected to layers of smoke from kerosene lanterns, subjected to poor eyesight because they use a poor source of lighting to do their homework, subjected to the risk of burning in their sleep due to a kerosene lantern being knocked over by the family pet, subjected to a choice between nutritious food and lighting…………..

Here is a challenge to wa Karanja and the rest of us, to back our “radical” recommendations with action.