You might remember us talking lots about our exciting new project in Senegal – not only a new country for SolarAid’s social enterprise, SunnyMoney, but also a new model for getting solar lights to rural Africa which was developed by the SunnyMoney Brains innovations unit. The World Bank/Lighting Africa funded SunnyMoney to deliver this project in partnership with the Senegalese Rural Electrification Agency and the Ministry of […]
When the sun sets across rural Africa many families reach for kerosene to light their home. Often burnt in a homemade tin lamp, the flame emits thick black smoke damaging a family’s health as well as the environment. It is expensive, accounting for around 20% of household income, and barely emits enough light for a […]
The stifling effect of kerosene light dependency has been on our radar for some time now. As you may have heard us utter once or twice in the past, kerosene used for lighting alone can eat up to 20% of a household’s income and emits harmful fumes – the equivalent of around 40 cigarettes per […]
Last night SolarAid was thrilled to receive the 2013 Ashden International Gold Award for its work getting solar lights to students in rural Africa. CEO, Steve Andrews, accepted the award but dedicated it to the local African teams who,“spend months away from their wives, children and husbands, out in the field miles and miles away from […]
We have just received official confirmation from our SunnyMoney teams in Africa that we have smashed through the half a million solar light barrier. Our teams sold a further 58,000 lights in May taking us up to the grand total of 517,265. That’s a potential reach of over 3 million rural Africans. Not bad for a charity that […]
John Keane, the SunnyMoney Managing Director, talks about our successes and failures in his latest blog. Here at SolarAid we firmly believe that the best way to achieve our goals is to learn from our mistakes. John notes that in the past six months we sold more solar lamps in Africa than we did in the previous six years. This is […]
Here is a fantastic blog from one of our intrepid Field Coordinators in the Eastern Province of Zambia. Mayase M’Shanga works for our non-profit trading arm, SunnyMoney. She organises and conducts head teacher meetings, delivers lights, makes presentations and helps conduct research to ensure we’re being as effective as possible with our programmes. The ground work […]
Charlie Miller is our Partnerships Manager. He has worked in the charity sector for eight years and currently manages our relationships with governments, aid agencies and corporate partners. He has just written a blog for Business Fights Poverty entitled: Agility, Innovation and Open-Sourcing – Crucial for enhancing ‘Bottom of the Pyramid Marketing’ and Distribution. In the blog, Charlie talks about […]
We thought we would give you a little insight in to some of the ways in which we help distribute our solar lights to so many rural African communities. We asked one of the SunnyMoney team to tell us a little bit about the work they have been doing recently in helping us spread our solar projects. This […]
Lighting Africa, a project set up by the World Bank to bring lighting improvements to ‘off-grid’ Africa, posted an article on their website a few days ago focussing on our non-profit trading arm, SunnyMoney, who they describe as a ‘distributor of quality, affordable solar lanterns’. The article is a case study of a family in the rural […]