Smart Villages was awarded this InnovateUK Energy Catalyst round 10 project in a consortium with our Ugandan and South Sudanese partner, ApTech Africa ltd. Project Overview This is a combined Electrical Storage System (ESS) and Solar Water Pumping project. It will supply 24/7 power and water to a hospital and 2 school in South Sudan. …
Renewable Energy and Water Supply Hubs for Schools and Hospitals (SS) Read More »
Smart Villages was awarded this InnovateUK Energy Catalyst round 9 project in a consortium with our Tanzanian partner, 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 …
Borehole Solarisation and Payment Enforcement in Rural Tanzania Read More »
Kiruru sub-village is a small community in the Simanjiro District of Northern Tanzania, and the second of the chosen sites for our SICENT project. Roughly 10km via (very bad) mud road from Terat, the local centre (where our partner organisation OMASI is based), Kiruru is actually administratively part of Oiborkishu village, 7km to the north, …
Project Aim: Develop and test a new method for improving access to healthcare for unserved Maasai communities in Northern Tanzania Outcome: Conducted over 11 different types of research activity in 4 rural Maasai communities, with a total of over 200 participants including health professionals, to determine health needs and priorities. Successfully applied existing video-conferencing technology …
Innovative Off-grid Access To Healthcare (STI4D, Completed) Read More »
This report summarises the key findings from the first two remote telehealth consultation trials, held in Loswaki village in Jan/Feb 2021, including detail on the health trial set-up, the sequence of activities for each, the number of patients that attended, and how the requirement for medicines to be transported to the patients was fulfilled. Patients …
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 …
People do not decide to become extraordinary. They decide to accomplish extraordinary things. Sir Edmund Hillary It is with great sadness that we have to share the news that Martin Kariongi, leader of our Tanzanian partner organisation OMASI, but more particularly our friend and colleague from Terrat, passed away in the morning of 1st March …
The SVRG approach is grounded in community engagement and human centred design, to ensure the systems we install bring real, lasting benefit. Unfortunately, due to language barriers, we are unable to run focus groups ourselves, but rely on our in-country partners to assist with translation, or with running the entire group following training. Our translators …
Language and Education Barriers in Community Engagement Read More »
This report outlines the health needs and priorities of remote Maasai communities in Northern Tanzania, specifically in the Simanjiro region where our project partners, OMASI are based. The research was done as part of an Innovate Funded Project, exploring how video consultations and batched medicine delivery could help provide quality access to healthcare for remote, …
Community Remote Healthcare Background and Priorities Report – Simanjiro, Tanzania Read More »
STI4D, a sister company to 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. Access to good healthcare is often challenging in the developing world, but this is greatly compounded for people living in remote off-grid …
Innovative Access to Healthcare for Impact in Remote Communities Read More »
This post was written new SVRG team member Natasha, on her first day on site in the communities in Tanzania: We arrived at the Ormoti site, to scenes of Maasai men sat around, wrapped in their traditional cloth. The solar array installed by Bernie, Anna and Arran previously was way bigger than I’d imagined, with …
First impressions at Ormoti, and a Maasai welcome Read More »
One thing that the Smart Villages model is based on is the notion of “appropriate technology” – that is the use of technologies that are specified and optimised based on their context and utility, rather than their absolute efficiency or performance. The classic example is the use of, say, an off-the-shelf lead acid battery instead …
So let’s start by stepping back a little. Our innovative partners, OMASI, have set up a number of different productive, social and community projects on their main site in the village of Terat in the Simanjiro District of Tanzania. There’s a shop, a community meeting hall, and a hostel (originally set up as somewhere for …
Unbalanced 3-phase power nearly killed the radio Read More »
We were delighted to find that one of the many amazing things about working in the Maasai Plains of Simanjiro District, south of Arusha, is the indigenous baobab trees. The baobab, Adansonia digitata, is native to Africa, and classes as one of the biggest trees in the world. Whilst they “only” reach 25-30m in height, …
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 …
Integrated Community Energy in Northern Tanzania Read More »