The following is a statement by Dr Jeremy Leggett, Executive Chair of SolarAid, to the Start Up Energy Transition Tech Festival, Berlin, 20th March 2017: I speak today about the wider context of all the wonderful innovation and creative disruption we are hearing about from around the world today. My message is about how to […]
Last week, FINCOOP, Malawi’s largest financial cooperative, signed an agreement with our African social enterprise SunnyMoney, who distribute solar products to people in the rural areas of Malawi, Zambia and Uganda. Fincoop has a large membership in Malawi, reaching remote parts of the country and SunnyMoney hopes to reach that market where Fincoop has many teachers as its members. […]
SolarAid is extremely proud to have launched ‘the world’s most affordable solar light’. After years in development, this little light, called the SM100, is now being distributed across Africa via our social enterprise, SunnyMoney. The SM100, developed for SolarAid in conjunction with Yingli Solar and UK industrial design firm inventid, incorporates feedback collected from SolarAid’s decade […]
Solar lights don’t just replace dirty, unhealthy kerosene lamps. You may have read in earlier blogs how solar lights are being used as tools for promoting peace and development amongst bitterly-divided communities. This novel approach, introduced in 2013 by Joseph Karanja in his home-town of Eldoret, Uasin Gishu County, started with just 14 families. In 2017, the 3,000 members of what has come […]
When SolarAid was founded in 2006, very few people in rural Africa had heard of solar power and fewer still could afford a solar light. For the past ten years SolarAid has been on a mission, to light up Africa and eradicate the kerosene lantern and although we have made some good progress and helped improve […]
Contrary to SolarAid’s usual “trade not aid” model this blog post, by President Kambani, explains how the Rotary English District 1100, and the District’s two Rotary Clubs of Cheltenham North and Cleeve Vale, working in partnership with the Rotary Club of Lusaka, Zambia raised funds in order to distribute SolarAid’s SM100 solar lamps to hundreds of […]
When Wendy Okurut got married to a local Ugandan man, in 2013, she visited Chelekura (a small village in Eastern Uganda) for the first time. The dazzlingly warm welcome she received from the villagers changed her life. From then on, Wendy rolled up her sleeves and created the Chelekura Village Project, a “small charity with a large vision”. In […]
Africa Live just made this great little video, explaining SunnyMoney’s work selling solar lights in Malawi. See the SM100 in action and hear from some of the children that have benefitted from the worlds most affordable solar light. Please share this video far and wide!
Following on from Brave’s letter earlier this month, the SunnyMoney team in Malawi has recorded this short message of thanks – and a song about the SM100, which has helped them so much in these hard times. If you missed Brave’s letter explaining the current situation in Malawi, which has left 6.5 million people with a lack with food, […]
As regular readers of the SolarAid blog will know, solar energy does more than just generate power – it changes lives! Sunshine Stories is a short documentary series, by Jill Johannessen, on how solar energy is a liberating power, featuring tales from rural Africa. Jill traveled around East Africa to explore how solar energy not only brings clean power, but forsters […]