Project: Zambia community centres

Felix Mukobeko is Zambian, 29, single, and a recent participant at our micro-solar production set-up workshop in Mumbwa (a small town 150 km west of the Zambian capital of Lusaka).

Felix assembles a solar lantern from locally sourced materials during a microsolar production workshop in Mumbwa.

His parents and older brothers have passed away, leaving Felix as head of a ten-person household. Felix is a self-employed carpenter and joiner, and also dabbles in brick-laying and painting.

Together with some friends he runs a carpentry business in town, and produces "anything" in wood for his customers - including double beds. The question was begging.... "How do you distribute a double bed to your customers who live many kilometres away in rural villages?" The answer is simple: on a wheelbarrow.

From left to right: Brian, Felix and Adonjah in their carpentry workshop discussing ideas about expanding into the microsolar business.

Felix's carpentry workshop, now in its third year, is typical of millions of small businesses in Africa: with no access to capital, limited tools and facilities, and bucket loads of gumption - somehow the business gets done.

During my six-month assignment in Zambia, one of the key challenges put to me has been to "find a distribution strategy for micro-solar products in rural Zambia". When I think of Felix distributing his double beds by wheelbarrow - it occurs to me that Felix is probably far better placed than I am to answer this crucial question for SolarAid.

Lackson, Reagan and Felix test connections and charge their solar lanterns with the solar panels that they just assembled during the workshop.

Felix has been trained to assemble solar panels and simple solar lanterns (which are made from locally available materials such as wood and plastic sewerage pipe). Now, with access to imported components - such as 1.8 watt solar panels, LEDs, diodes and resistors - Felix and his colleagues are eager to expand their business into microsolar, producing solar panels and solar lanterns for the rural market which is currently dependent on candles and kerosene for lighting. Felix is optimistic about market potential for microsolar:

"Many people like the wooden lamp that we made because it's strong and hard, and it has bright light".

We have been very busy here in the SolarAid office in Lusaka. Some Sisters from a nearby orphanage recently took part in some training in Fiwila in macrosolar maintenance.

Sisters from Rehoboth Orphanage, Mkushi.

The sister in charge of the orphanage, Sister Prudence (seated third from the left), showed us how the solar systems installed five years ago were not working as expected.

Abel and I went to the orphanage (which has more than 200 children) and found that it was actually the lack of cleaning of panels which had led to the problem. We quickly showed one of the boys at the orphanage how the cleaning is done.

I'm pleased to say that after two weeks, we contacted Sister Prudence and she was all smiles as she confirmed that the problem was no more!

More from Zambia soon!
Emmanuel

Recently I spent time in Fiwila (around 350 km north-east of the Zambian capital Lusaka) to work with our partner organization HODI on rolling-out microsolar production in the area.

Our basic idea is to create jobs in Zambia - not in China. It was a pleasure to spend some time with small business owner, Mr Ginnis Moono, in order to better understand the joys and tribulations of being a small business entrepreneur in rural Africa.

Sharing ideas. Janelle talks with Mr Ginnis Moono about his business highs and lows. Next month Ginnis will be one of ten microsolar trainees in Fiwila to receive training from SolarAid in micro-solar technologies.

Following is a brief summary of Ginnis' story, as he told it to me:

I'm 38 years old, live in Fiwila, and am supporting a household of eight people: four children of my own, a niece and a nephew, plus my wife and myself. I'm of the Tonga tribe: my father - who was a policeman - was from Choma in the south of Zambia, but I was born in Kabwe. I own a small shop selling everything from tiny portions of cooking oil and fresh eggs to candles and shoes. There are five shops in this area, including mine.

Open for business. Through sheer determination and the ability to overcome numerous obstacles over the past eleven years, Ginnis' general store, in remote rural Zambia, now enjoys sales turnover of more than £24,000 per year.
.

I started my business in 1997. The first year it was basic farming. Most of the people here are subsistence farmers, and harvest is in June or July. I farmed maize and sold it in the local market. With the money I made from this, I decided to start trading in fish. It meant cycling along dirt tracks on my bicycle to the river - which is 68 kilometres away. It took almost the whole day to get there. I'd leave at six in the morning, and be there by 2pm. I bought fresh fish directly from the fishermen - big and small fish, perhaps around 50kg of fish in total - and then I'd hop on my bike with the load of fish and cycle back home again. We like to eat dried fish in Zambia, so I had to dry the fish on my return. It was all a lot of work, but there was a good market (need) for fish here - and no one else was offering it - so slowly I built up my business and was able to put aside some capital.

Next I expanded into groceries (including continuing with the dried fish), and this is pretty much where I am today. My customers are the people who live around here (and sometimes even visitors like you). I sell lots of batteries, for radios mostly. Probably every household here would have a radio.

Battery sales are good. Ginnis sells about 50 large and 10 small batteries each week. The most common usage is for radios.

For my customers' lighting I sell candles and kerosene (paraffin), although for months now there has been no kerosene at all as the costs have become too high, and supplies have dried up. Some people are travelling to Mkushi (about 66 kilometres away) in order to buy their kerosene, but now I concentrate more on candles. Many of my customers will come in daily to buy two or three candles for that night. I sell candles for 500 Kwacha each (about 8p), or a packet of twelve for 5,000 Kwacha (80p). Candles are now a cheaper source of light than kerosene: one litre of kerosene can cost between 7,000 and 8,000 Kwacha (£1.30), and on top of that you now have to add the cost of travelling to Mkushi.

With kerosene in short supply, candles are now the most common form of lighting in Fiwila.

I know that some people around here are using diesel in their lanterns - those that don't mind reducing their life span! Lighting is always a problem: candles, kerosene, diesel and batteries are all expensive. I'm sure that there is a strong market here for the micro-solar products that you've shown me - especially the solar lanterns. Even for the simple solar mobile phone recharger, I know that my customers will want to buy them. Most people around here are farmers: they could be out working in their fields while charging their phone. The solar panel is so light and simple, and it would save them time and money. Currently the fee to recharge a mobile telephone is 2,000 Kwacha (30p), and it takes about 3 hours.

When I need to restock my shop, I cycle to Masansa (28 kilometres away), make a booking to hire a 3-tonne truck, then cycle home. It costs 1.5 million Kwacha (£240) to hire a truck for the day, and on top of that I have to add the cost of petrol - currently around 9,000 Kwacha per litre (£1.40). I hire the truck for one full day: midnight to midnight. The afternoon before going to Lusaka, I again cycle to Masansa, then start off in the truck right on midnight. I drive, and either my wife or my teenaged nephew accompanies me. We usually arrive in Lusaka at around 6am. Then it's a full eight hours of running around Lusaka, buying stock for the shop. I buy wholesale, mostly from the Kamala town centre and city market. At 5pm we set off from Lusaka so that we can be back in Masansa on time to return the truck just before midnight. On average I would purchase around 14 million Kwacha (about £2,000) worth of stock in one of these trips, and probably do about eight such trips a year. Originally I shared the costs of this trip with another shopkeeper, but now I'm generating enough business to do the trip alone. My four competitors (the nearby shops) follow this same procedure to obtain their stock.

The prices in my shop are reasonable. To give you an idea, one tin of fish costs me 2,800 Kwacha (45p) wholesale in Lusaka. I add on 200 Kwacha (3p) to cover transport costs and 500 Kwacha (8p) as profit. So my customers can buy it for 3,500 Kwacha (50p). [Janelle's note: we pay 3,950 Kwacha (54p) for the exact same product in Lusaka - where shopkeepers don't have to deal with such challenging supply chain issues]

A few weeks ago there was a theft in this area. They hit all of the five shops here. It's the first time to happen to me. I reported it to the police, but there is not much we can do, and of course there is no insurance. I lost about 1.3 million Kwacha (about £200) worth of stock.

Probably my biggest business challenge over the past eleven years has been lack of access to capital. Everything I've done, I've built up slowly myself. I've never seen the internet before, but I've heard that you can buy second-hand vehicles from Japan online. This is my goal for the future: to invest in a truck of my own. It will be much cheaper for me to collect stock from Lusaka, and I could rent the truck out to others when I'm not using it myself.

Success story
Ginnis Moono is living proof that Africans can build and manage successful businesses-despite being forced to overcome countless obstacles that we in the developing world do not even have to consider.

Ginnis' tale is a success story: for Ginnis, for his family and for the community that he serves. Arguably, the best solution to reducing Africa's spiralling poverty is through job creation and income generation (that is, income generated from productive economic output, not in receiving mere handouts). It is SolarAid's mission to do just that - by providing access to solar technologies through its micro-solar projects.

Ginnis Moono (far right) makes notes at a meeting to examine micro-solar products, discuss market needs, and make plans to rollout micro-solar production in Fiwila. This meeting, arranged by SolarAid and HODI, included some key representatives from the community.

Micro-solar training
Next month - deep in the remote Fiwila catchment area of Zambia's Mkushi district - SolarAid will be training a group of entrepreneurs in microsolar technology. This will include instruction on the assembly of small solar panels, conversion of mobile phone rechargers, and of course building simple and low-cost solar lanterns.

Ginnis Moono will be one of these trainees, and there is little doubt in my mind that he will quickly build up a successful microsolar business, providing employment for some, and significantly improving the lives of thousands of rural poor in his area by offering cheaper and cleaner sources of energy.

On a personal note - with my being fresh out of business school and armed with an MBA - it is rather humbling to talk with someone like Ginnis Moono. There is probably very little that I could teach this guy about business management.

Janelle Tisserand
MBAs Without Borders/SolarAid

In much of rural Zambia, communities depend heavily on either candles or home-made kerosene lanterns for their lighting needs (see picture to the left). On a recent field trip we came across one of these home-made lanterns.

We met Mrs Elizabeth Kabanga, wife of the Village Headman in the Chibanga community, which is located deep in the Fiwila catchment area (about 360 km north-east of the Zambian capital, Lusaka). Mrs Kabanga demonstrated her lantern (see picture to the right), giving us an idea of just how bad the thing smelt - and how poor the quality of light that it produced. "How do you expect us to read with this?" she asked.

This is exactly the type of foul smelling, highly polluting, inefficient, and expensive lighting source that we are trying to replace - with clean, simple solar lanterns.

Mrs Kabanga kindly presented the lantern to the SolarAid Zambia team, and it now sits in our office in Lusaka as a strong reminder of why we are here.

Janelle

(Photos by Jean-luc Tisserand)

Greetings... this time from the so named 'Travel Lodge Executive Hotel' in Kabwe, a town about two and a half hours north of Lusaka.

Abel, Ben, me, Paul Simon (Global Cool Foundation) and Emmanuel, in Kabwe during site visits.

We arrived here in Kabwe last night after quite an epic series of journeys (totalling around 12 hours) which took us from Lusaka to see three separate institutions which our partners HODI have identified as possible macrosolar installation sites.

On our arrival at the hotel I asked the hotel receptionist 'How is Kabwe?' To which she replied 'in mourning'. She was referring to the fact that the late President Mwanawasa's body was in Kawbe today - he is being flown across the country to allow people to pay their respects.

Yesterday's trip first took us to the town of Masansa (4 -5 hours north of Lusaka) where we met up with Simon and Steven from HODI. Masansa is quite a lively market town as it's the last settlement which is served by the electricity grid in these parts of the world - so it serves as a natural hub of services for the sometimes quite distant surrounding rural areas.

From here we drove for about an hour to the village of Mulungwe which is situated in the Bulungi Hills - a particularly rural, but beautiful part of the world which in some ways reminded me of where I used to live in rural Tanzania. Here we visited the local school which was built back when England were celebrating football glory in the old Wembley stadium in the 60s and met with members of the local community.

Everyone was excited at the prospect of the school receiving a solar installation and they discussed how it would bring benefits such as lights for evening classes and lesson preparation, income generation activities through setting up a phone charging station and also the possibility of running a computer and television which could be used for education, entertainment and again as a way of generating an income which can be used to maintain the system.

Our stay here was all too brief and I would have loved to have spent a day or two getting to know the area and its people better - next time!

Next we headed to Fiwila and the Fiwila Development Trust, a local NGO which was set up to serve the local community. Here we witnessed a lively debate about the area's energy needs and where they, as a community, would like to see solar installation. The results of this discussion were this:

'Our local clinic already has a solar system for some lights and a refrigerator, although ideally we would like a bigger, more powerful, system there. Our local school would also really benefit from a lighting system - as we all would in our homes. If a system in installed at the Fiwila Development Trust Facilities, however, we can use this system to generate an income and save so that we can pay for a school system and perhaps an upgraded clinic system in the future.'

This line of thinking is completely in line with recent programmes discussions we have been having. Macrosolar systems can be introduced as part of a 'solar challenge' which involves setting income-generation targets which can be used to meet 'solar expansion targets,' thus starting solar energy revolutions in each community.

Power is Free!

We'll do all we can at SolarAid to help the people of Fiwila and elsewhere realise these dreams. Any donations we get from people like you, who are reading this blog and interested in helping, will get us closer to realising those dreams.

Thanks,
John.

Today we've been in Mumbwa town and the village of Nakasaka to see a potential solar installation site.

The community in Nakasaka are very eager to have access to solar electricity. They explained that evening light would enable them to run adult literacy classes, to watch television and generate an income by charging car batteries...which are not an uncommon way for people to bring energy into their homes.

As we left Nakasaka on the dusty road, we came across a cyclist who had a 14 watt solar panel strapped to the back of his bike. He explained that he wanted to use it to charge mobile phones - a sign that people are starting to believe in solar energy and what it can do.

In Mumbwa town, we visited the local market and came across a stall selling radios and LED torches, all imported from China. I showed the salesman a microsolar panel and hooked it up to one of his radios and he said he was interested in selling them.

I then took a closer look at his torches and saw that these can be easily charged using microsolar panels. So I bought some to bring home and test to see how good these lights actually are.

While their quality may be questionable, the fact that these lights are for sale demonstrates that there's clearly a demand for cheap lighting products that do not rely on kerosene...or diesel. That's right, kerosene shortages have led to people burning diesel in its place. I'm pretty sure diesel fumes are carcinogenic. Nasty stuff. All the more reason for us to press ahead with microsolar projects.

With your help we can speed up the process...bringing power to more people, giving them independence and access to clean, safe energy to light their homes. The interest and enthusiasm of these people is unquestionable, so we're halfway there. Please help us by donating to this project today.

Thank you,
John

Greetings from Zambia! More specifically, greetings from the district of Mumbwa. More specifically than that... greetings from a small white minibus which is driving due east along the road back towards Lusaka. Thankfully it's a tarmac road, which means I can write this. We've just spent the last few hours on incredibly dusty tracks running between the villages of Chilimboyi and Nakasaka where our partners, the People's Action Forum, run community centres- CABLAC (Capacity Building Learning Activity Centres).

Yesterday, in Chilimboyi, we attended the official inauguration of the new solar system - which involved plenty of speeches, a play with a solar power theme and a bit of dancing by yours truly with Paul Simon from the Global Cool Foundation and Margaret, PAF's area coordinator!

Cheers and dancing as members of the community enjoy light in the Community Centre, or CABLAC, for the first time.

The day culminated with the lights being turned on - which is what this is all about. The Community of Chilimboyi now have clean renewable light. They also have the opportunity to generate an income by using the system to charge mobile phones and other devices. They've even started selling 'pay as you go' phone credit - which means people no longer have to travel into the main town just to communicate.

The illuminated CABLAC outside Mumbwa

The day ended with meal of chicken, beef stew and nshima. Nshima is a staple across much of East and Southern Africa. It's basically corn flour mixed with water which is then heated and stirred until it becomes a thick paste... sound tasty? No? Well, it's not exactly my favourite, but somehow, yesterday, I think I enjoyed it. Yep - I almost couldn't get enough of it. I must have been a hungry boy. Either that or it was the fact that Paul and I helped to make it. When I say 'helped', we stirred it... for about 10 seconds. That was enough to fill my eyes with smoke-filled tears and for Paul to start sneezing for the next 10 minutes. Smoke-free cooking is surely a priority for the chefs of rural Africa.

More updates soon!

John

The SolarAid team in Zambia went on a field trip last week to Mkushi district, about 350km north-east of Lusaka.

SolarAid has partnered with HODI to undertake both micro and macrosolar projects in the region.

Here's a photo of the team:

From left to right: Janelle Tisserand (MBAs Without Borders/SolarAid Zambia), Emmanuel C Chunda (Solar Coordinator for SolarAid Zambia), Simon Nguluwe (Project Manager, Fiwila - HODI) and Abel Mbewe (Programmes Manager, SolarAid Zambia)

The organisation HODI, was set up in 1996 to provide support for community-based organisations, with the aim of encouraging self-sufficiency. It operates primarily in rural areas, in five of Zambia's regions: Southern, Central, Copperbelt, Luapala and Northern provinces.

Sharon Makoni, at the SolarAid training workshop in Zambia

This is 20 year old Sharon Makoni of Chilimboyi, Mumbwa District, in rural Zambia. Last week Sharon joined SolarAid's first Solar Training Workshop in Zambia. She learned how to construct a simple battery recharger with a small solar panel, and in the photo is seen testing this on a converted kerosene lantern.

I've recently started a six-month assignment with MBAs Without Borders in Zambia, with the challenge of helping SolarAid to find a sustainable way of getting small solar products - such as simple solar lanterns - into the hands of Zambia's rural poor.

For people like Sharon, this could mean gaining access to cheaper and healthier lighting, as well as the chance to generate income by establishing her own micro-solar business.

It's a simple yet incredible idea - and one that could have a huge impact on the lives of millions of people living in poverty. The challenge, of course, is making it happen.

Thank you,
Janelle Tisserand

SolarAid is very grateful for the work people like Janelle and her colleagues are doing in Zambia and beyond. Please help us to have an even bigger impact on the lives of millions of people in need, by donating to this project today.

Thanks from the SolarAid team.

Solar trainees in Chilimboyi, Mumbwa. 7 August 2008

Last week the SolarAid team in Zambia spent several days in Chilimboyi, Mumbwa (about 150km west of the capital Lusaka) to conduct a series of solar training workshops.

This was a great success. Sessions included macro-solar system maintenance and management (for a recently installed solar system in the community centre); and micro-solar production. The group also participated in a fantastic (and highly interactive) session on how to improve a solar lantern prototype, to meet their specific needs. So, all very productive!

This is the first of many solar training workshops to be conducted by SolarAid in Zambia. We're very encouraged by the enthusiasm and flow of ideas from the group.

Janelle Tisserand
SolarAid Zambia/ MBAs Without Borders