Smart Villages

Profile: Mlamba John – East Africa

What is your off-grid energy business? My off-grid energy business is an efficient stove producing business known as Jensen Energy incorporated in collaboration with partners named Nelson Maleko and Senteu together with Elifadhili Shaidi. Can you give a brief overview? Our business incorporates at producing efficient cooking stoves that avoid the loss of heat plus …

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Scaling up distributed renewable energy for healthcare in India

[:en] This month, Smart Villages and LCEDN are partnering with Power for All to bring you a webinar about the nexus between universal healthcare (SDG3) and universal electricity access (SDG7). As a follow up to our February webinar, “Healthy villages are smart villages”, we’ll ask – how does distributed renewable energy help to make villages …

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Greenlink: We’re building a company, we’re not rescuing Africa

[:en] Maarten Strengers, Founder, Greenlink Location: De Bildt, Netherlands / Tanzania “We’re building a company, we’re not rescuing Africa.” As an electrical, mechanical and ICT engineer, Maarten Strengers flies to Africa when his technical know-how is needed; when there is a problem with installation capacity, or to advise on a solar community centre. “After a …

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Congratulations to the winners of the Smart Villages 2017 Photo Competition!

Competition was fierce in each of our photography categories: we received photos from over 200 people in more than 50 countries! We are pleased to feature the winners below – just click to open the gallery and learn more about the people in the photograph as well as the photographers themselves. In addition to their …

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Webinar: Off-grid but online – ICT in the last mile

ICT is clearly a game changer both for on-grid and off-grid areas of the world. With smartphones, people in remote, “last mile” areas are increasingly gaining access to the internet and gaining access to information, social media, entertainment, and communication with far-flung family and friends. But mobile phones aren’t the only way that ICT is …

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Steve Andrews, Heya: for-profit models are working for clean technologies in Africa

Interview with Steve Andrews, CEO, NewLight Africa (Heya!) Location: London, UK and Nairobi, Kenya “Think of us as the Amazon of rural Africa” After some time in the solar lights business, Steve Andrews asked himself what more his customers could need. He was CEO of SunnyMoney, a company owned by the NGO SolarAid, which he …

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Making the market” for solar in northern Tanzania

Interview with Mohamedrafik Parpia Founder, Zara Solar Location: Mwanza, Tanzania “I didn’t know anything about solar” A Dutch woman walks into an electronics store in north-western Tanzania. It sounds like an improbable beginning. Karlijn Arkesteijn is one of the people Mohamedrafik Parpia credits for going from running a family business on the shores of Port …

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How will India install 10,000 micro-grids over the next five years?

Dr. Rahul Walawalkar, President & MD, Customized Energy Solutions India (CES) and Executive Director, India Energy Storage Alliance (IESA) Harsh Thacker, Project Manager for MICRO, the Microgrid Initiative for Campus and Rural Opportunities, Customized Energy Solutions India (CES) Location: Pune, Maharashtra, India “Learning should not be proprietary; we have to learn from each other’s mistakes” …

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Leena Chandran-Wadia: Are mini-grids the answer to rural electrification?

[:en] Interview with Leena Chandran-Wadia Senior Fellow, Observer Research Foundation Location: Bangalore, India “The day we can say that every home is electrified is very far away” ‘Kerala is totally electrified!’ run the headlines in the  Indian papers. It’s a claim many Indian villages make, says Dr. Leena Chandran-Wadia, the Senior Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation …

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