Solar Sisters

I think I may have mentioned that there are frequent power outages here, but as I type, we haven’t had one for a couple of days now and so I guess it will go any moment now, particularly as is getting more humid by the second, or is that another hot flush, no I think it is the next storm brewing.

Back to the point; we are on the main road from Kampala to Kabale and Kigali on Rwanda and so are on the main power route too.  Villages only a couple of kilometres from the road do not have power and so rely on paraffin for light, wood and charcoal for cooking and heat.  There are few appliances which require any power except of course the ubiquitous mobile phone.  It is the technology of choice for all; they use it for music, radio, games and camera.  However in order to charge them they have to go to the local trading centre, often a couple of kms walk up or down hill, pay Ush 500 and wait 2 hours for it to recharge, which they will have to do every couple of days, funds being available.

The lamps

We hosted the introduction of Solar Sisters by Evelyn Namara, from Kampala, who was born in the region, and speaks the local language, which is funded by an American  NGO, which is providing a business opportunity to village women to start a business selling solar lamps and solar lamps which can charge mobile phones.  It works by providing a sample of each which the women can demonstrate to the rest of their community, secure orders and send the cash via mobile network and retain part of the profit themselves, they costs are ush 40,000 (£12) just for the lamp and ush 120,000 (£36) for the phone charging version.  These are very significant sums for women to find, but the benefits are that they is safer that candles or paraffin, brighter, cleaner saving about ush2000 per week on paraffin and not having to carry it from the trading centre; but with the 120,000 version they can also start a business charging phones at ush500 at time. 

There was a lot of interest from the women invited and all took away some samples; a number of men also wanted in on the scheme, but it is being reserved for the women to give them some economic autonomy and increase safety in the home.

More information can be found at    http://www.solarsister.org

Women with their lamps

I hope that they manage to make the scheme work; however there is a strong expectation that ngo’s will provide these things for free with no expectation of any input from the Ugandans.  It is very hard to find a way to get the local community to work with and build on the resources provided by the muzungo’s (white people) and NGOs.  I will follow with interest how this works  .