A customer by the name of Shalom Ngulube got wind of what we do and swept the shelves of SolarAid clean today by buying all the products on offer.

SolarAid stock.

We had 12 finished panels with light bulbs which we intended to send to our trained sales groups. Shalom smelt an opportunity to make money and challenged to order the whole lot for sale in his home area. The proceeds, he said, will be used to pay school fees for his relatives as he is the bread winner for his extended family. He said he will also keep a panel with a light bulb which his relatives will use for night studies. He has promised to come back on Thursday next week to buy more.

One of SolarAid's objectives is to support education and we feel happy that this is being achieved. We have taken this as a challenge and we have responded with equal measure by ordering more frames. Our dedicated and motivated assembling teams are now fired up and convinced that they are producing products which are earning kudos by those that have used them, hence the surging demand.

Our team of volunteers.

This positive development will not only flatter our volunteers but also the entire SolarAid staff, and everybody involved for their tireless efforts to change the lives disadvantaged people in this way.

More community-based organisations and youth groups will be trained in Nkhata Bay and Rumphi. Questionnaires have already been administered to the potential trainees to filter out the right candidates for the training. Many more groups of people are now coming forward to us begging for involvement in this project.

Selling SolarAid products at the market.

We are very sure that we will keep on delivering good results because the people we work with are inspired by their self-motivation which is key to sustainability. I salute our innovative volunteers for their hard work and commitment to the cause.

We're currently looking for a cheap car to buy for the volunteers to share, so we've been spending some time researching the best vehicle to get. We have four cars in mind at the moment. We're still negotiating the prices and we've brought onboard an independent mechanic to certify their roadworthiness. We do not want to be deceived by appearance!

We also want the vehicle to be cleared by the police first before paying for it. The big danger of buying second-hand cars from private individuals over here is that you may end up buying a stolen one, hence the need for police involvement in the transaction. In this case payment will be given upon satisfactory conclusion of this simple but important process which should be through within the next few couple of days.

Cai (the solar water pumps guy) arrived here on 4 August and seems to have settled in well, but I think he will struggle to find the materials he needs in Mzuzu. Like us, he needs to do a lot of internet based research and the slow connection we have is not helping matters at all!

We've linked him up with reputable people in institutions where he can get professional advice on what to do.

To hear more about what Cai is up to have a look at his blog where he's uploaded a short film of his first few days in Malawi: www.solar-aid.org/project_water_pump/.

The society has a membership exceeding 5,000 in the northern region alone! I was accompanied by Harry Mtika, from the Mzuzu Technical College and Brave Mhone who leads Ungweru Youth Group. Both are key allies in our project. Harry ably handled the technical presentation while Brave presented the sales section. Both guys were trained by the volunteers and Fred Migai.

I tackled the aims and objectives of SolarAid, the project approach, micro business aspect, local capacity building and sustainability. I think they were impressed as all their questions were satisfactorily answered through practical demonstrations! We lit a converted kerosene lamp and played the radio cassette using a 12 volt panel much to the delight of the farmers. We've been kept on our toes because we may not even meet the impending demand.

The Chief Executive has asked us to work with their various farmers' groups who are already involved in generating income through activities such as coffee-growing and bee-keeping. The solar component will enhance their income generation base, and he was really keen to see things happen as soon as possible.

He also appealed to the participants to spread the 'good news' far and wide to increase awareness and he has instructed the manager in Mzuzu to get in touch with me.

It was an amazing experience and I hope in the few coming weeks something big will happen. Knowing that assembling is a process that demands carpenters to work on the wooden frames, I assured them that large orders will take a maximum of one month to be delivered as we don't have a warehouse to stock already finished products.

I also had a visitor from Nkhata Bay who bought a solar panel from one of the salesmen. Upon using it many people became interested. It has caused quite a stir in his village and he has decided to venture into the solar business!!

We need to identify more mechanized carpentry shops to meet the ever rising demand for the panel frames. I'm hoping to meet with RAIPLY LTD at Chikangawa Forest to discuss the production of wooden frames, as they are the biggest timber processors in Malawi. So, as ever, it's busy here in Malawi!

Fiskani

Fiskani Msutu, Project Coordinator in Malawi

....And so the lights went out. We had used the last unit at about 9pm that evening.

You might expect that for two people who work on a project with solar power, that such an event poses no problems. Although we have products that can deal with these circumstances, we had no converted light bulbs, nor a paraffin lamp conversion LED unit (our two key lighting products!) in the house, as we recently moved all materials and products to our new office! So we had to use candles and a paraffin lamp for the rest of the evening. Embarrassing. And in the morning Dave had to use charcoal to prepare our breakfast.

Today, we'll bring a couple of light products back to the house I think...

More from us later,

Carl

Let me introduce Daniel. Daniel works three days a week at our house. Before he came here, he worked for Stephanie, a Belgian student who was doing her thesis over here. Stephanie asked us if we needed somebody really good to help out at the house. Since we were tired of doing our own laundry (and the advice of a Belgian is always trustworthy!) Dave and I were happy to offer Daniel a job. He works 3 days a week, so he still has time for his studies.

We have no regrets that Daniel is with us. He's great. He does the laundry, cleans the house, does the dishes, takes care of the garden and goes to the market for us, which means that Dave and I can totally focus on the solar project.

Daniel, helping in the SolarAid garden

What's also great is that Daniel is very interested in the solar energy. Last week he went back to his home village and took a solar panel and an LED converted paraffin lamp, so he could demonstrate to his family and friends. He came back with great news! People were very enthusiastic about our products and he has several customers waiting for him when he goes back. Maybe he'll turn out to be a fantastic sales person.

Until next time,

Carl

Here's Daniel demonstrating a solar-powered radio

We had people from Ungweru Youth Group, Technical College, SJOG (St John's of God), and several sales people also came along to help out- Brave, a sales person from Ungweru came to give technical and commercial advice and information to visitors. Two students from Technical College demonstrated the assembly of paraffin lamp conversion LED units and two members of Ungweru were converting light bulbs. There were solar panel demonstrations and light products were on display in a 'dark box'.

This is a 'dark box', inside which the SolarAid light products were being displayed.

We also held a competition! We invited visitors to come up with ideas for a brand name for our products. The prize was a complete solar package: a solar panel, 3 batteries, a converted light bulb and a parffin lamp conversion LED unit.

The jury deciding the winning brand idea was a trio of specialists, consisting of Maxon (SolarAid trustee and head of TECRET), Harry (Head of the Electricity Department at Technical College), and Brave (Head of Ungweru and our top sales person!).

There were in fact two winners; one for the solar panels and one for the light products. Look at the picture below to see one of our new brand names!

Our new brand name: Kadzuwa Muuni.

It was interesting to see how the SolarAid team could stay in the background during the open day, offering minimum input during the event. This showed us that local people are enthusiastic and very capable of promoting the projects they're involved in.

Visitors at the Open Day at Mzuzu University.

Also, some interesting contacts were made. Dave met some people interested in our project and the products.

I have also designed a new product with the 0.3 watt panel. It's very simple to make with elastic, Velcro and glue. We'll give our sales people sample products to go and demonstrate with out and about. Our market would predominantly be taxi bikes and young people.

That's all for now,

Carl

Some participants at the Open Day, putting together solar panels.

One, an Irish lad called Dave, has business skills, and is leading on helping the locals set up their own small businesses. The other, a Belgian called Carl, has technical skills, and is leading on developing new variants of the solar products as feedback comes in from the sales people in the markets. They are both super-dedicated and wonderful people.

Frankly, I'm not sure if I could do what they are. It's easy to fly in and out for a week. But they are living for two years in a red-mud brick hut with running water sometimes, maybe. And in the week before we were there they had a cobra on the back lawn one day and a green mamba on the front lawn the next. Not even Harrison Ford can deal with that kind of stuff easily.

Jeremy

This is Carl, one of our highly-skilled volunteers out in Malawi.

Now, seventy people work for Fred. He is in Zambia and then Malawi at the moment, doing training for us. As for non-African scaleability, we met all the agencies you need to in Lilongwe, the capital. Everyone, form the Malawian government, through the UN, to the Brits, wanted to help. Our most encouraging meeting was actually at the British High Commission and the UK Department for International Development. A senior official there heard our story, and how we have similar operations on the ground now in Tanzania and Zambia. He thought for a moment and said: why don't you try to replace every kerosene lantern in Africa? Nick and I looked at each other. It's not often we are out-ambitioned by British government officials.

He explained how it could be done, in principle. We would propose a mega-project signed on to by all African governments that would go to the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Climate Convention for accreditation. The CDM entails organisations hard-pressed to make carbon cuts in the North paying for cuts made in solar lanterns substituted for kerosene ones in the South (such as the converted lantern in the photo). This would be bound to appeal to African governments, the UK official said, because so far most of the CDM $millions have gone to Asia and Latin America, where it's easier to pull big projects together than it is in Africa. Nick and I went away gratefully and are working on this.

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The reason is that many people have them already, and it's easy to switch. You simply wire up a solar charger, fashion a plastic cylinder with LED lights to drop into the column of the lantern, put the batteries inside the cylinder, and off you go. The fact that nobody in Malawi had been able to buy any kerosene for two months before I arrived kind of helps the case, as does the soaring price even when it is available.

A solar entrepreneur with her solar lantern and panel.

The second tale is related: the number of local organisations and people that can benefit from this. In Mzuzu, our local coordinator Fiskani and our two volunteers lined up a roomful or representatives from small organisations able to make and/or sell solar chargers.

One is a Catholic organisation already teaching handicrafts to people to help them lift themselves out of poverty. Their carpentry workshop currently makes housings for our solar chargers, in which rechargeable batteries can be housed. It's a small step for them to wire up the solar cells too.

Another, called the Centre of Appropriate Techology, has already built a hut with our funding where a production line is up and running. A half dozen or so trained locals turn them out and a first embryonic sales force is out in the markets selling .....easily.

Volunteer Carl and CAT Director Grant, outside the Centre for Appropriate Technology in Mzuzu.

More in my next blog entry.

Jeremy

First some impressions of the country and the people. I knew Malawi was going to be poor, but I didn't know quite how poor. As you drive around, you can easily sense how close the people live to disaster.

There is no real functional economy. A few big companies do sugar or whatever, then there are vanishingly few mid size or even small companies between the elite and the masses of subsistence farmers. This is the result of decades of post-colonial corruption. A gent called Hastings Banda pillaged the place to fill his bank accounts, and northern multinationals aided and abetted him as ever. But the subsistence farmers make do, and you see maize, cassava, groundnuts lapping up to the doors of the huts everywhere. You don't see many livestock, and there are children just everywhere: thousands and thousands of children.

Despite all this manifest poverty, you see very, very many smiling faces, and hear plenty to keep hope alive. The schools do their best. Even the poorest speak English passably to well.

Two anecdotes. We met a teacher, Mary, in Nkhata Bay. She teaches classes of over a hundred in the local school, in two shifts a day. She invited us to her hut, where we heard all about the challenges in detail and saw her indomitable spirit shine through them. There are also opportunities.

We met a lad called William Kamkwamba, now nineteen. Aged fourteen, living in a rural hamlet of typical red-mud brick huts miles with tin roofs in the middle of nowhere, he went to a school like Mary's and learned about electricity. He decided he wanted to make some of that for his family, so they could see at night, and run a television. He went to the library, read about wind power, and decided he'd make one of those turbine things. He got some bamboo poles, some old metal to make blades, a bicycle frame and chain to run a dynamo. he wired it all up to a box of batteries and ....bingo.... light at night. Have a look at this photo:

We went to his hamlet, saw the turbine, kicked the tyres. We'd have hired him on the spot, but some American philanthropist had heard all this before, and is packing him off all-expenses paid to university in South Africa (plus solar powering the whole hamlet). SolarAid's national co-ordinator, Fiskani, is another example. He gives the impression his folks must be teachers or government officials, but they're not: they are subsistence farmers. Here's to education, and the Mary's of the world. Plus the lights at night to help do it.

If you want to watch a short video about William, go here:

More about the trip in my next blog entry!
Jeremy Leggett, Chairman

But he's put us in touch with an Italian organisation that has been extremely successful in surmounting these problems and helping Malawians create sustainable enterprises. It's all a question of giving people the confidence and the skills to release their potential.

As you'll have realised by now, we seek to work in partnership with all kinds of organisations: international NGOs, companies, local businesses, government - anybody who is willing to share their experience and work with us for our common goal. We don't believe in reinventing the wheel!

Nick

On the one hand, there are some extremely committed people here who are devoting their lives to fighting poverty. Malawi is one of the world's poorest countries, with the majority of its 12 million people living on less than a dollar a day. It's in desperate need of development.

On the other hand, it seems that the international development system has some serious failures here. Millions of pounds of aid from governments, international organisations and charities have led to a culture of dependence that is endemic. Countless local NGOs have sprung up that are entirely dependent on this outside aid. Any sense of entrepreneurship is hard to find, and the country numbers barely 2,500 operating registered businesses, according to an international official we met today.

But most shocking of all is the culture of 'seating allowances' that the international NGOs, international donor agencies and foreign governments have set up. It goes like this: there are so many international development organisations here competing that they've started paying people to attend their trainings and workshops, so that they can then report back to their overseas headquarters that so many people came to their training session.

Initially, this was meant as a form of compensation to take account for the fact that attendees were possibly giving up valuable work time in order to attend trainings. Instead, it has led to an increase in dependency and a decrease in commitment verging on corruption: people turn up who have no interest whatsoever in the training and just come to collect the cash.

It totally beats the point. Why bother running a training in agricultural techniques, capacity building or literacy if you're going to pay people to attend it?

Even worse is that agencies now pay government officials in order to meet with them. So a government official may make $100 just for turning up to a meeting with an international agency. So there's no incentive to do any work apart from attend as many meetings as you can! How can we then blame African governments for being corrupt when our agencies actively encourage it?

Suffice to say that there's no way we're going down this route. We've met a number of other NGOs that refuse to play game, and we're one of them. If that means fewer people turn up to our microsolar trainings, then so be it - at least we'll be sure that those who do turn up are committed!

Nick

Greetings from Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi. Jeremy (our chairman) and I have just spent the day visiting a number of international organisations and government departments here. We've had a massively inspiring time that is shaping our vision: we thought we were ambitious, but some of the people we spoke to have encouraged us to think even bigger.

One meeting in particular stands out. We were discussing our plans for converting kerosene lamps into solar lanterns in Malawi with a British government official. We thought we were being pretty ambitious when we were saying that we ultimately want to convert all the kerosene lamps in Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia into solar lanterns.

He suggested we take it one step further: how about setting our sights on converting all the kerosene lamps in Africa? That's hundreds of millions of kerosene lamps being converted into a clean, reliable and cheap source of energy: one that does not generate carbon dioxide, that does not lead to burns, eyesight problems, accidental poisonings or lung disease, but that does generate a better quality of light for children to learn how to read.

Jeremy and I looked at each other during the meeting: now that's a vision that we like. Will you join us?

Nick Sireau

Other design work involved using a single 0.3 Watt mono crystalline plate housed in a grooved wooden frame that can be attached to the handlebar of a bicycle and used by bicycle taxis to run radios. This latest product application will be tested by a local bicycle taxi.