Africa's Quiet Solar Revolution [View all]

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/28269-africas-quiet-solar-revolution

By Tanzanian standards, Nosim Noah is not poor. A tall, handsome woman with the angular features of her fellow Masai tribe members, Ms. Noah makes a good living selling women’s and children’s clothes in the markets of this northern Tanzanian city. The four-bedroom brick house she shares with her parents and three children outside town has many modern comforts: mosquito screens on the windows and doors, a gas cookstove, and, most important, a faucet with running water in the back of the yard, next to a stall with a working toilet.

But despite their relative prosperity, up until late 2013, the family had no electricity.

“We waited 10 years for them to turn the power on – 10 years and nothing,” says Noah.

Then, one afternoon, the Noahs had an unexpected knock on the door. An agent for a new electrical company called M-POWER said that, for a sign-up fee of only 10,000 shillings ($6), he could install a fully functioning solar home system in their house – enough to power several LED lights and a radio. The payoff was immediate. While Noah used to spend $18 a month on kerosene, she now pays a monthly average of $11 for her solar lighting, and she no longer has to go into town to charge her cellphone. The person most affected, though, may be her 2-year-old daughter, Emilia, who is afraid of the dark.

“She would cry every night – every single night,” says Noah. “It was a struggle to put her to sleep.” Now, with a new light above her bed, “it makes a huge difference,” she says.

The changes taking place under the Noahs’ roof are emblematic of a quiet revolution sweeping across much of rural Africa and the developing world.