Twenty-seven Americans from around the country leave today for Africa with more than just their luggage?they are also taking solar panels, electrical equipment, and medicines. Shunning safaris, they will instead spend 18 days traveling around rural Uganda and Rwanda, installing solar equipment in public facilities like health centers, schools, orphanages, and community and micro-enterprise centers.
Organized by Solar Light for Africa (SLA) a U.S.-based nonprofit organization founded in 1997, the travelers comprise three doctors, one dentist, eleven senior-high and college-aged youth, two solar tech experts, a filmmaker, and SLA leadership, including its founder, Bishop Alden Hathaway, the Sixth Episcopal Bishop of Pittsburgh. Once in Uganda, the young people will team up with a similar number of East African youth to install solar systems as they travel around the rural regions of Uganda and Rwanda. Also accompanying the Americans will be Anglican Bishop William Rukirande and Penina Kyembabasi, the personal assistant to First Lady Museveni of Uganda.
A highlight of the trip will be the solar-electrification of an entire Ugandan village. In so doing, they will “light up the sky” at night where before there was only darkness. First Lady Museveni selected the village as the launch of a Village Power Project. Uganda has at minimum 1,000 villages that are not connected to grid power.
In partnership with Solar Energy Uganda (SEU)?a Uganda-based entrepreneurial solar tech company?SLA has set a goal of solar electrifying 100,000 homes throughout Uganda over the next five years.
“Studies have shown that the single most significant intervention in community development is the provision of a dependable, affordable electric service,” says Bishop Hathaway, “But the Western model of using fossil fuels that depend on a vast distribution infrastructure is too expensive for Africa. Solar power is the answer. It is a wireless technology, like the cell phone, and is a light infrastructure that can be quickly built anywhere.”
Solar is a clean, renewable energy source that replaces the toxic fumes of kerosene lanterns and generators, thereby reducing carbon offset emissions.
Partnering with the Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Resources Trust and World Bank, SLA will document and register the reduction of these emissions as solar is installed.
Dr. Lindsey Marcellin of Purcellville, Virginia, is returning to East Africa with SLA for the third year in a row. After her experience last year in the Rakai District of Uganda?where AIDS was first detected and where SLA provided major solar electrification and pure water to the Kakuuto regional hospital?she suggested, “Imagine getting medical treatment in a region like the ones we visit that has a population with 1 in 5 people HIV/AIDS positive. With solar power providing electricity to the hospital, a simple autoclave becomes a life-saving device for sterilizing medical equipment and the medical staff can better diagnose and treat patients with the use of a rechargeable otoscope. This year Dr. Marcellin is taking along her entire family. Dr. Roger Marcellin is a dentist and will treat patients alongside the other doctors at the several rural health clinics that SLA will electrify along the way. Their three daughters will assist however they can throughout the trip.
The group will return to the Kakuuto Hospital to complete the solar-electrification of the pediatric ward that was being built when they arrived last year. That hospital is now a full-fledged hospital, thanks to the solar power, and is able to preserve medicines in refrigerators and use medical equipment requiring electricity. Of equal importance is the solar-pumped and solar-purified water that is now available not only to the hospital but also to the local villagers who access the water from a spigot outside the hospital. This hospital project was made possible by funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2004 through another SLA partner organization, Global Environment & Technology Foundation.
While at Kakuuto, the doctors will help the local medical staff treat patients. Dr. Jennifer Peckoo-Williams of Tallahassee, Florida, is returning with SLA for the second year, while Dr. James Stands of Hopkins, South Carolina, is participating for the first time, having been persuaded by his daughter, Hadyn, who went on the trip last year as part of the youth team and is going again this year.
From Uganda, the American and East African group will travel on to Rwanda, where they will launch a new project of installing 100 solar systems in rural public facilities over the next two years. Also planned for 2006 is the major solar electrification and provision of water at a hospital to be selected by Rwanda’s First Lady Jeannette Kagame, a patron of SLA. She, along with Anglican Archbishop Emanuel Kolini, serve on that country’s AIDS Commission so they are both very eager to have SLA provide solar power to as many health clinics and hospitals as is possible as funding is raised. They recognize that combining solar power with pure water is key to combating all types of disease, including AIDS and malaria.
SLA will electrify more rural schools so that students can see better in classrooms and study at night in boarding school dormitories. Donated computers and printers are sometimes made available and, in some instances, enough power has been provided for satellite download of educational programs by Discovery Channel, as well as Internet links to other countries. This enables rural students to compete with their urban counterparts for college enrollment. To date, SLA has installed more than 1,700 solar systems in East Africa.
Installations are made year-round by Solar Energy Uganda as SLA raises funds, in addition to the summer medical and youth mission trips. This will in fact be the seventh such mission trip to East Africa.
As the G8 leaders of the world finally agree that aiding Africa on a macroeconomic level must be at the forefront of all development efforts, Solar Light for Africa continues its effort to help the countries of East Africa on a micro?yet still important?level. Coordinating its work with local church leadership and governments of those countries, SLA has made significant strides in helping people improve their lives with better healthcare and increased educational and economic opportunities, all with the inexhaustible and clean power of the sun.
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