Barefoot Power, a for-profit social enterprise operating across East Africa, has built a network of ‘solar entrepreneurs’ who offer solar lighting to towns. Typically, the day’s chores are done, children’s studying is over, and small shops are closed when the sun goes down at 7:30 p.m. In Musubiro, like so many other villages across Africa, the main source of light is kerosene, which is not only expensive, but has a myriad of negative health side affects, and the risk that always comes when you mix open flames and straw thatched-roof dwellings. According to Barefoot power, “Africa is becoming a test lab for mobile phone development Solar power: breakthrough could herald big drop in costs. Villages leapfrog the grid with biometrics and mobile money. Small is big: a cellphone chip that allows monthly battery charge”
Tags: Systemic change
