Two chickens for a solar panel
Whilst walking through the Lugoda Village Market in the Mufindi Southern Highlands of Tanzania, I came to realise that a missing component of my research was understanding how much a micro-solar panel costs, compared to other products that a villager would buy in a village market. For example, how much would a panel cost compared to the price of lunch for a hungry villager?
Lugoda Village Market in the Mufindi Southern Highlands, Tanzania
I saw a woman who had just bought a piglet. I asked her how much she paid for the piglet. "40,000 Shillings" she said, as she tried to keep the piglet from running away.
Woman with piglet at Lugoda Village Market
Then I spotted chickens, goats, flip flops, second-hand clothing and cows. And before I knew it, I started to gather different prices for different products that a villager in rural Tanzania would buy and compared the prices to the price of a solar panel (which at 15,000 Tsh is about £7)
Click here to see my findings!...
Product list.doc
Bye for now,
Irna
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Two chickens for a solar panel.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://solar-aid.org/scgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/284
1 Comments
Leave a comment
Search
Categories
Tag Cloud
- AIDS
- application process
- assembly site
- assessment
- batteries
- benefit
- challenge
- children
- clinic
- clinics
- collaborations
- commitment
- committment
- communities
- community
- cooperative
- cost
- Dar Es Salaam
- deaf
- Destory
- Dihimba Secondary School
- disability
- disabled
- distribution channels
- distribution networks
- donation
- education
- empower
- energy
- entrepreneur
- evaluating
- farm
- first impressions
- funder
- funding
- harness
- health
- health clinics
- HIV
- homework
- incentive
- income
- inspired
- investment
- Iringa
- Irna
- John Keane
- joy
- kerosene lamp
- kikoi
- lanterns
- learning
- LED
- local shop owner
- macro-solar
- macrosolar
- maintenance
- Manzese
- market
- MBA
- MBAs Without Borders
- medical clinics
- micro-solar
- microsolar
- mobiles
- Mtwara
- Neema
- Neema Crafts
- new office
- new volunteers
- Njombe
- panels
- photovoltaic
- postivie impact
- Primary School
- radios
- Registration
- remote
- research
- rural
- rural Tanzania
- sales
- sales strategies
- school
- schools
- Scottish and Southern Energy
- Secondary school
- secondary schools
- social enterprise
- solar
- solar lamp
- solar panel
- solution
- Southern Tanzania
- students
- support
- sustainable business
- sustainable income
- sustaining enterprise
- Tanzania
- Tanzanian
- testing
- Ting Ting
- tourists
- training
- Training
- transform
- USAID
- village
- village market
- villager
- visionary
- volunteer
- volunteers
- widows
- women
- Women's Action for Development
- workshop
- young people
- youth
Recent Posts
- More possibilities for solar in rural areas...
- Solar for schools in Iringa...
- Neema Crafts steps in to help unlucky Kasim
- First thoughts of SolarAid Tanzania...
- First of two solar donations arrive in Tanzania
- Two chickens for a solar panel
- A solar village, Tinga Tinga style!
- Solar for Igoda Primary School
- The gift of sunshine
- Luhunga's sunny gift that keeps on giving
Irna,
I just wanted to thank you for the postings you have made on solar energy in Tanzania, both in this blog and also the (sadly underused MBAs Without Borders) blog, relating your on-the-ground experience.
These accounts and those by your colleagues like Anna have motivated me to look a lot more closely into it; in addition to the cost savings (and reciprocally, income opportunity for e.g. schools to become more self-sustaining), the safety aspect is significant - kerosene can be dangerous, and traditional fuels have their own major drawbacks.
I recently developed a business plan for a microfinance operation in Malawi predicated on the new MFI teaming up with supliers like SolarAid to be the financial enabler for collateral-poor entities like schools, clinics, etc to be able to set up income generating businesses such as micro-utilities via solar. If that worked, it could be a nice synthesis of (finite) charitable resources and (elastic) quasi-commercial resources, to achieve scale. Only scratched the surface, but the possibilities intrigue me.
John Tull
jtull1@jhu.edu
(Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies)