| Residents of 11 villages in Kisarawe District will this year benefit from a solar power project to be financed by the Sun Bio-fuels firm.
Under the project, the company, which has invested in a bio-fuel project in the district, planned to spend up to 50,000 sterling pounds for distributing solar power panels in the villages. The company’s chief executive officer, Mr Richard Morgan said in Kisarawe recently that the project was meant to supply power to the community and create employment in the local community. “We are aware that people are in need of water, fuel and infrastructure, and other related issues, but we also thought that power was also essential to them,” he said. He said that, power was useful especially during this time when Africa for the first time will be hosting the World Cup in South Africa, saying: “It is not fair to deny people from watching the football tournament.” According to Mr Morgan, his company was working in partnership with Philips International in order to bring opportunity and light to the local communities. Mr Morgan added that, his firm expected to conduct a pilot study in August in order to establish the actual cost for supplying energy to more villages. The bio-fuel project, which started early this year in the eleven villages in Kisarawe district, is expected to offer employment opportunities to more than 2,000 youths from the surrounding villages. Source: The Citizen |
Tag: Solar PV
Solar charged phones launched in Tanzania
Tanzanians have been urged to use environmentally friendly mobile phones to support global initiatives to reduce the impact of climate change.
The call was made by the Minister of State in the Vice-President’s Office (Environment) Dr Batilda Buriani in Dar es Salaam on Thursday when launching the environmental friendly mobile phone which will run on solar power.
She said the mobile phone which has been launched by Vodacom Tanzania will help to preserve the environment and reduce dependence on electricity.
She said the cellular phones have come at the right time when Tanzania and other countries in Africa are facing serious power problems.
She said though the number of mobile phone users in Africa has increased by 50 percent, millions more cannot access the service due to power problems.
Dr Buriani said the solar charged cellular phones will help Tanzanians living in rural areas to get relevant agricultural information especially on markets.
“People in rural areas have for years not benefited from mobile phone services due to power problems, but currently they can enjoy modern communications by simply exposing their cellular phones to light”, said Dr Buriani.
She said Tanzania becomes the second country in East Africa to use the solar charged mobile phones after Uganda launched it last month. Vodacom Tanzania Director Dietlof Mare said his company was improving the communication industry by giving customers modern advanced products.
He said since most Tanzanians in rural areas are low income earners, they have decided to sell the solar charged phones at affordable price of 50,000/-.
Mare said his company has so far been successful in its recent M-PESA service with more than one million people registered to use it countrywide. He said more than 16bn/- is transacted through M-PESA every month.
SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN
‘Increasing Energy Access through Enterprise’ Toolkit
The wikipage of USAID on ‘Increasing Energy Access through Enterprise’, is featuring a case study on Zara Solar, Mwanza, Tanzania. The website seems very informative, with practical tools (see toolkit).http://energyaccess.wikispaces.com/
The resources in this “Wikispace” are meant to serve two purposes: (1) to serve as a “filing cabinet” of information and resources that can be used, collaboratively debated and brought up to date; and (2) as a home for a toolkit of materials — presentations and spreadsheets, guidebooks and learning manuals, case studies of what works and what has failed, reference documents and videos. The audience is a diverse group of development practitioners, government officials and energy entrepreneurs.
This “toolkit” is informed by practical experiences that on the one hand have been successful, scaleable and self-sustaining, and on the other by things that have been, at best, partially successful. The toolkit is organized by topic and also by type of resource as described on the following page.
Godfrey Sanga - personal webpage 