Catherine Gwynne-Evans – Assistant Project Manager Catherine is dedicated to community engagement and business development and has been working in this field for more than five years. She previously worked in green economy development in South Africa, with a particular focus on green finance and energy service delivery. Catherine has a background in economics and …
If you are, or know anyone who may be interested in impactful and innovative energy- and agri-related projects across East Africa, Smart Villages is recruiting for an International Technical Field Engineer that has the right to work in the UK (or will have it by the commencement of the employment), and would love to receive …
2023 was another busy year for the project and our partners Chemolex in Nairobi. And a year in which we benefitted from continuation funding, extending the original 3-year project by a further year, from UC Santa Barbara and the Benioff and Coca-Cola Foundations. Main activities throughout the year were continuing to operate the riverside trash …
Removing Plastic from Kenya’s Rivers – Year 4 Report Read More »
Can sustainable energy transform the livelihoods of agricultural communities? This video explores the impact of Smart Agri-Centres, an innovative energy access solution created by Smart Villages and Kiima Foods, a UK-Uganda partnership.
SVRG is carrying this InnovateUK Energy catalyst round 9 project out together with our Tanzanian partners, OMASI, and an additional partner from Uganda, ApTech Africa ltd, to build on the success of our original ECR6 Sustainable Integrated Community Energy innovation project. Project Overview From 2019-2022 in Northern Tanzania, SVRG and OMASI collaborated on an Energy …
Borehole Solarisation and Payment Enforcement in Rural Tanzania Read More »
SVRG is carrying this InnovateUK Energy catalyst round 9 project out together with our Ugandan partners, ApTech Africa ltd, to build on the success of our original ECR7 Pay-N-Pump innovation project. Project Overview PAY-N-PUMP is an innovative smart digital pay-as-you-go water-pumping and irrigation solution for small scale farmers in Uganda, built in a push-cart format, …
Pay-N-Pump 2.0 – adding storage to mobile solar irrigation systems Read More »
2022 has been a busy year for our project, and especially for our partners Chemolex. With COVID restrictions ending, it has been possible not just to remove record quantities of plastic wastes from the rivers in and around Nairobi, and innovate new designs for equipment to help with the job, but also the public engagement …
Removing Plastic from Kenya’s Rivers – Year 3 Report Read More »
The Smart Villages Initiative researched and published 37 workshop reports between 2014 and 2017. For ease of reference, they can all be accessed here.
The Smart Villages Initiative researched and published 15 technical reports between 2012 and 2017. For ease of reference, they can all be accessed here.
We were so excited to be able to join our Kenyan partners Chemolex again in September 2021, once international travel restrictions had begun to ease, to see the tremendous progress being made on river plastic cleanup, and to sit down together to solve some interesting challenges in the project. Once again, amazing results have been …
Removing Plastic from Kenya’s Rivers – Year 2 Report Read More »
Exciting news – after an the international travel problems with COVID, our international consortium of partners was finally able to test the new COMET system (Community Energy Toolkit – formerly known as the Minigrid Game) in our target communities in Somaliland – Lughaya, Bali Dhiig and Qool Caday. We will post an update later about …
… in the context of the Service Value Test (SVT), a key tool in the Smart Villages approach which engages community members to uncover their needs and aspirations for the future development of their village. It’s an important early step when we start working with a new community, and the quantitative and qualitative data about …
The Service Value Test (SVT for short) is a key tool in the Smart Villages approach that we like to use as early as possible in our conversations with communities we are looking to work with. We find it really helpful for the following reasons: It gets us quantitative preference data from community members telling …
The Service Value Test – what it is and why we use it Read More »
As we remember our friend, Martin Saning’o Kariongi, who passed away this week from coronavirus, we wanted to collect together some of the material that we, and others, have on the internet featuring Martin talking about his work.
While looking through my notes this week hunting some site data for a community in Tanzania that we are working in jointly with our partners OMASI, I found – on the very first pages of my notebook – the notes from our first project meeting, where Martin gave us a little glimpse of his life …
It seems a long time since we were with our partners Chemolex in Nairobi in February of 2020, exploring different river sites for this project. The COVID lockdowns in both the UK and Kenya, and restrictions on international travel, have made progress much harder for us. It is with pride though, that we see the …
Removing Plastic from Kenya’s Rivers – Year 1 Report Read More »
As part of our project with Clear Sky Power and Energy Action Partners in Somaliland, we ran Service Value Tests (more here) in the three focus communities for the project. The aim was to help us get to know them a bit better, understand their needs and priorities, and so design the COMET toolkit to …
Recently, we were invited to give a presentation by our colleagues at the UK Low Carbon Energy for Development Network (UK LCEDN), as part of a webinar they were running on “Transforming Energy Access” for organisations who were interested in applying for the latest Innovate UK Energy Catalyst (round 8) competition, closing in September 2020. …
The InnovateUK Energy Catalyst and working with SVRG partners Read More »
Recently our project partners in Lesotho, the Energy Research Centre at the National University of Lesotho, asked us to contribute to a week-long Masters’ students event on rural energy access. Because of COVID, we were sadly unable to make it in person, but delivered the presentations via Webex instead. Here is the contribution from Dr …
What we mean by Community Engagement – the SVRG way of working. Read More »
Recently our project partners in Lesotho, the Energy Research Centre at the National University of Lesotho, asked us to contribute to a week-long Masters’ students event on rural energy access. Because of COVID, we were sadly unable to make it in person, but delivered the presentations via Webex instead. Here is the contribution from Dr …