Smart Villages

WR27: Smart Villages in India – State level insights

Workshop Reports /

The discussions in both state-level workshops in India discussed in this report revealed that the biggest gains from an integrated sustainability solution for the smart city-smart village linkage would be to address the challenge of youth unemployment in both rural and informal urban communities. The introduction of disruptive technologies that generate the opportunity for rural youth to learn new skills—installing and maintaining rural …

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“Jikokoa”: Scaling up clean cookstoves and providing local jobs

Energy Entrepreneurs /

Interview with Boston Nyer BURN General Manager, Kenya Location: Kenya “The next step is to get more sustainable fuels into people’s homes”. “The whole impetus is to save trees,” explains Boston Nyer, BURN’s general manager in Kenya. In East Africa, 60% of deforestation is driven by the need for wood and charcoal for cooking. “Our …

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d.light founder: Solar can leapfrog the grid for people living at the “bottom of the pyramid”

Energy Entrepreneurs /

Interview with Ned Tozun Co-founder, d.light, a for-profit social enterprise based in China, India, East Africa, and the USA Location: Nairobi, Kenya “Now that the technology has evolved, we want to provide more holistic energy solutions”. After studying and working in engineering, Tozun knew he was “wired” for entrepreneurship. He started “a couple of companies” …

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Regional Workshop: Sustainable energy sources for rural development and climatic resilience of off-grid communities in Central America, the Caribbean and Mexico

Workshops /

The Smart Villages Initiative and the Academy of Sciences of the Dominican Republic jointly held an international workshop on the role of renewable energy for rural development and for enhancing the climatic resilience of off-grid communities in Central America, the Caribbean and Mexico. The event took place from 16 to 18 November in Punta Cana, …

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Mlinda’s pico-grids in India: Powering productive uses at the right price

Energy Entrepreneurs /
Girls School Hostel Sundarbans Electrified by Mlinda

Interview with Vijay Bhaskar Country Director, Mlinda Location: India “We pitched our tariff as an alternative to fossil fuels, and they’re willing to pay our tariff and make sure they’re consuming responsibly”. Mlinda’s first project to bring renewable energy to the Sunderbans, in West Bengal, didn’t go as well as hoped. The organisation wanted to …

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Thwarting thieves: Solar Turtle keeps solar panels safe & secure

Energy Entrepreneurs /

Interview with James van der Walt, Founder, Solar Turtle Location: Stellenbosch, South Africa “Step one is having the courage”. James van der Walt was working as a mechanical engineer in Ireland in 2009, when the economic crisis hit. “It was atrocious, everyone was going on the dole,” he remembers. He was taking a ferry to …

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Disruptive technology for rural villages: The case of Sure Chill solar refrigerators

Energy Entrepreneurs /

Interview with Ian Tansley Chief Technical Officer, Sure Chill, a Cardiff-based tech company Location: UK “The single biggest challenge we have is people grasping the scale of what we can do: reaching billions” Tansley has spent over thirty years working in Africa, in Nigeria in particular. Remote solar-powered systems were failing; for example, conventional refrigerators …

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Smart Villages launches the Off-grid Energy Challenge for West Africa

Press Releases, Top Story /
West Africa Off-grid Energy Challenge

Smart Villages is pleased to announce the launch of the Off-grid Energy Challenge for West Africa. Building on the success of annual East African competitions in collaboration with the Cambridge Development Initiative, this inaugural West African competition challenges entrepreneurs to tell us how they want to grow their existing businesses.  Winners will work with consultant …

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West Africa Off-grid Energy Challenge 2017

Competitions /
West Africa Off-grid Energy Challenge

The West Africa Off-grid Energy Challenge took place in early 2017.  Twenty-nine established off-grid energy companies applied to the competition by describing how they wanted to grow their existing off-grid energy businesses. Over a period of four months, five finalist companies worked with consultant mentors through Cambridge Bridges for Enterprise (link to https://www.bridgesforenterprise.com/) to analyse and refine their …

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Village Infrastructure Angels: Village agriculture can be powered by solar energy

Energy Entrepreneurs /

Interview with Stewart Craine Founder, Village Infrastructure Angels Location: Vanuatu, Indonesia, Honduras, Papua New Guinea “You have to be obsessed with access to sustainable energy to do this job”. Stewart Craine calls his work “an adventure”—an indication of the robust attitude he’s applied throughout his career as an energy access entrepreneur. Craine co-founded Barefoot Power, a …

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WR26: Energy and agriculture for smart villages in India

Workshop Reports /

This report summarises the presentations and discussion at a workshop held at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Patancheru, Telangana, India from 21 to 23 September 2016. The workshop organised jointly by the Smart Villages Initiative and ICRISAT focused on energy for agriculture in smart villages and its potential to catalyse productive enterprises that add value to agri-business and the …

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BR20: Findings from the workshop on energy and agriculture for smart villages in India

Policy Briefs, Resources, Top Story /

Agriculture continues to be central to the lives and economies of rural communities in India. Many of those communities have little or no access to modern energy services. These realities motivated the holding of the workshop “Energy and agriculture for smart villages in India” in September 2016 at the International Crops Research Institute for the …

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Children in rural Ghana empowered by access to information, IT skills

Energy Entrepreneurs /

Interview with Josephine Marie Godwyll Founder and National Coordinator at Young at Heart Ghana Location: Ghana “The missing link most of the time is information”. Rural communities have a tremendous amount to gain from access to information. The internet offers potential solutions to many of the problems that make rural life difficult, but these are …

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Smart Villages announces winners in the 2016 Energy Innovation Challenge for East Africa

Press Releases, Top Story /

Smart Villages is pleased to announce SUJA Eco-Energy Company as the winners of the 2016 Smart Villages Energy Innovation Challenge for East Africa.  Building on last year’s success, this year’s competition, in collaboration with the Cambridge Development Initiative, included an even broader range of partners and sponsors.  Each of the three off-grid energy teams were …

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Cambridge students bring tech to Indian students, inspire learning

Energy Entrepreneurs /

Interview with Moni Gupta Co-founder of Mobile Education for Smart Technology Location: India / Cambridge, UK “The same thing they are learning in their books they can explore with this technology and build up more creativity”. Today, Moni Gupta is a PhD student in chemistry at the University of Cambridge. But she remembers her time …

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Changing lives with energy access: Micro-hydro grids in rural Tanzania, Part 1

Video /

An Italian project (CEFA) and the local village company (MVC) have installed a mini-hydro grid in the southern highlands of Tanzania. The project has helped a large off-grid area of Matembwe village to access electricity and build up the local economy and services. It is sustainable thanks to management and maintenance.

It is not a village but people: Long Lamai, a case study of a smart village

Blog /

Long Lamai is a Penan village in upper Baram, northern Sarawak, of Malaysian Borneo. Travelling to the settlement from the nearest town Miri takes eight hours on rough logging roads and an hour of hiking through the dense rainforest. Alternately, it is reachable by flying from Miri to Long Banga by an hour’s flight via …

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For energy in Nepal, “remoteness is more than geographical”

Energy Entrepreneurs /

Interview with Ben Campbell Location: United Kingdom; Nepal “Remoteness is more than geographical”. Ben Campbell is a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology, Durham University (UK), whose research and collaborations have focused on sustainable energy solutions for remote mountain villages in Nepal. But his interest in sustainability began well before he entered academia, when he …

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