Anna: September 2009 Archives

SolarAid Zambia's Country Business Manager, Trevor Robson, recently visited the London office. It was great for the London team to meet Trevor - some of them for the first time - and hear about plans for scaling up our work Zambia.

Trevor told us about a teacher he recently met; a real gem as far as SolarAid is concerned. The teacher is called Charles. He is one of our key contacts for SolarAid's micro-franchise work in Zambia.

Charles, who is based in the Eastern provinces, bordering Mozambique and Malawi, has been working with the village Chief, Jerry. Chief Jerry is another key member of the community, who is passionate about giving as much back to his community as he can. Unlike some Chiefs in Zambia and across Africa - he is not interested in self-promotion. This Chief puts his community first and foremost.

Community builders
Charles and the Chief are working together to build a school. They hope to work with SolarAid to install a small solar system on the school for lighting. Close to the school, there is a primary care community clinic. This clinic is extremely basic with no running water. As a result, hygiene standards are very low. Sadly, the lack of water is a very common problem in rural clinics such as this one.

Charles, the Chief and Trevor have been discussing the possibility of building a solar-powered water pump between the school and the clinic, servicing the two buildings, with one water tank for each. The team also hope to fit a solar system directly onto the clinic to power a vaccine fridge.

Meeting the needs of the remotest communities
The school and the clinic are about 18K apart. Although this may sound like a sizable distance, it is important to understand the level of isolation of these communities. Both the school and the clinic are more than 80K (about 50 miles) away from the nearest mains power supply. That's pretty remote. And with poor soil quality, little rain fall and terrible road networks; there is little opportunity for these communities to generate income. But with solar, things could change.