35,000km, 11 countries and a tonne of carbon saved

I recently caught up with Gwyn Roberts to hear about his progress on his epic Overland in the Sun trip, from London to Cape Town.

Gwyn and Ryan are currently in Iringa in central Tanzania, visiting Neema Crafts, where SolarAid set up one of its first manufacturing facilities, as part of the craft workshop.

After eight months and 35,000km, the team will soon be arriving in Malawi, where they hope to visit the SolarAid team in Mzuzu. From there, they will go through Mozambique and plan to arrive into South Africa around mid August.

Aside from a few minor technical problems with the vehicle, the team have had a very successful trip so far.

The vehicle, which is semi solar-powered, has proved to run very efficiently. In fact, for every 100km travelled, they have saved an entire litre of fuel by using photovoltaic solar on the roof of the truck. That's a saving of 350 litres of diesel, which equates to almost a tonne of carbon saved so far.

Gwyn's truck parked up whilst the solar panels (bottom right) charge up the battery in the sun. Tanzania, June 2010

You can follow Gwyn and Ryan's progress direct through their blogs at www.overlandinthesun.com

Please support Overland in the Sun and SolarAid, by sponsoring them. You can help them reach their target of £20,000, and help SolarAid enable many more rural communities in Africa to use solar technology as a means of generating sustainable income.

Thank you,
Anna