ICTworks by Inveneo

At the Africa Energy Awards 2010, the Barefoot Solar Engineers of Malawi won the Best Rural Electrification Project category, highlighting their positive impact on rural communities.

But they don't need a fancy award ceremony in South Africa to confirm their life-changing program that starts with a short training at the Barefoot College in India. Just watch this video:

As Clement Nyirenda explains, they are improving living conditions in many ways already:

The installation of solar electricity in these households has contributed greatly to the improvement of people’s livelihoods. The day for most of these households no longer ends at dusk, but like all of us privileged to have electricity, they now have a choice. School-going children are now able to study and do their homework even at night.

Availability of solar electricity has also enabled the households to save money, which they used to spend on buying other sources of lighting e.g. paraffin, candles. The money thus saved will go a long way in enabling the households to access the various other important needs for their households.

The fact that women, who used to be ordinary mothers in the village, are in the forefront of changing their communities shows that gender dynamics have changed in the villages.This will be a source of inspiration for many young Malawian women who are engaging in career paths that traditionally associated with men.

We've highlighted the Barefoot Solar Engineer program before. I can only hope it expands across Malawi and other countries in Africa too.

Here is an interesting video from the Barefoot College solar program in which they've trained illiterate women from African villages to be solar engineers for their communities in just 6 months:

Barefoot College makes four key points about their program model:

1. Work with the community to make sure they are willing to accept the woman as a technician before she travels to India for the training
2. Do not include "paper certified" technicians in the process, they cannot be seen as equals by the communities or the local technicians
3. No certificates - its the community that certifies technicians. Certificates only promote leaving communities for city jobs.
4. Partnership models work in rural areas - the government or donor buys the initial solar equipment and the community pays technician for ongoing maintenance

Using the numbers in the video of 60 women trained and 40 villages solar electrified for $1.4 million, or $35,000 per village, I would say that the Barefoot Engineers have a pretty cost effective program. I would only suggest that training the women in Africa, rather than flying them to India, might even generate a greater cost/benefit scale.