Project Overview
SVRG is carrying this project out jointly with our NGO partners in Tanzania, Orkonerei Maasai Social Initiatives (OMASI). This project is funded by InnovateUK, the UK’s Innovation Agency.
Minigrids are widely advocated as the most appropriate solution for solving universal energy access in the developing world. However, few minigrids achieve sustainable long-term operations without subsidy. Our partnership is trialling an innovative approach to minigrid design and installation in marginalised Maasai communities in Northern Tanzania.
Using our “Smart Village” electrification and development approach, our partners and we work with communities to determine their needs and ability to pay, and design an integrated technology approach that combines a clean energy minigrid with a suite of appropriate and relevant technologies for productive uses, agricultural productivity and value addition, and community services such as healthcare, education and clean water, in order to promote sustainable long-term community development, which also has the effect of increasing demand for power from the minigrid and improving the community’s ability to pay.
We are testing this approach in four offgrid Maasai communities, to try to demonstrate a sustainable business model that can be applied more widely in the region, and are also following a rigorous monitoring and impact analysis process to collect the evidence necessary to prove the benefits of this approach.
See our latest project update posts below:
- Climate Change is Real
- Trusting Time Estimates from Focus Groups
- Unreliable Grid Power
- Ormoti Business Hub – Showcase Video!
- Happy Halloween! – Watermelon Carving and Singing
- Find me phone signal!
- Primary School Messaging on Early Pregnancy
- Tanzania in Bloom
- Kiruru Maasai Business Incubation Hub
- The Service Value Test – what it is and why we use it
- Martin Kariongi, in his own words
- Martin Saning’o Kariongi – a life in brief
- RIP Martin Kariongi, Director General of OMASI
- Teaching with Limited Resources
- Language and Education Barriers in Community Engagement
- A Solar powered Electric Milling Machine
- Bucket-mounted Solar Systems
- Grid extension in Tanzania
- Rural Perceptions of Solar Power
- A Wood-Mounted solar array for the Tanzania’s Maasai Radio Station
- Animals in the Electronics!
- First impressions at Ormoti, and a Maasai welcome
- Innovation Africa-style
- Unbalanced 3-phase power nearly killed the radio
- Meetings with Remarkable Trees…
- Solar Boma Systems should be a thing
