by Munetsi Madakufamba This is the last in a Jour-part series on Solar Energy
Although over two-thirds of southern Africa’s combined population of more than 150 million live in rural areas, the provision of thermal and hydroelectricity has generally been skewed in favour of the urban minority, an anomaly hampering development efforts among the rural majority.
This has been attributed partly to the prohibitive cost of extending national grids to the thinly spread, populated, low-income rural communities, as well as a lack of adequate mechanisms to ensure citizens have, as a right, equal access to national resources including electricity.
Never the less, efforts are being made throughout the region at the government and donor level to provide renewable energy. More and more remote communities are gradually emerging out of darkness, to simple installation of solar panels, a more versatile and ecologically viable source of energy.
Available technology only allows solar power to be exploited at a small-scale level, thus making it ideal for rural communities where appliances are normally of a low energy requirement.
The power is harnessed by using photovoltaic (PV) panels, which have silicon cells that convert sunlight directly to electricity. Silicon is the second most abundant element on our planet after oxygen, constituting 28 per cent of the earth’s crust, therefore the manufacture of solar panels is guaranteed for the foreseeable future.
Mmegi, a weekly newspaper published in Botswana, reports that grid provision of electricity to remote parts of the country is not scheduled in the near future, and switching to PV systems looks like the viable option.
A pilot project initiated in 1992 in the village of Manyana by the government of Botswana through the Ministry of Mineral Resources and Water Affairs has had encouraging results. The project, later commissioned to the Rural Industries Innovation Centre in April 1995, has 42 users who have already begun paying back monthly instalments of US$31.25 for a six-light system over two years.
Drawing from the Manyana lessons, the government now intends to set up a revolving fund to benefit the majority of the rural population who do not have access to electricity.
In Namibia, decentralisation of electricity generation by means of individual PV systems was integrated into the project “Promotion of the Use of Renewable Energies” launched in 1993. A revolving fund was set up under the Namibian Development Corporation which grants loans to interested rural households for the purpose of PV systems.
Although South Africa has 30 percent more generating capacity than it uses, two-thirds of its 42.8 million predominantly black citizens have no electricity. But, as demonstrated by a pilot project by a US company in conjunction with a local village in Kwazulu/Natal where selected homes were successfully electrified. The government foresees great potential of meeting its target.
South Africa has already embarked on a high priority programme that aims to provide PV electricity to 16 400 rural schools and 2 000 rural clinics by 2005.
Although still too expensive to compete head-to-head with conventional generating technologies, PVs have found ever-larger niches among low-income villagers around the region because of their versatility and low maintenance costs.
Even the Maasai herders around Terrat in northern Tanzania now have a chance of getting electric light
A Maasai organization, the Olkonerei Integrated Pastoralist Survival Programme, with the help of Commonwealth Science Council, runs a scheme that distributes solar panels. The distributors offer flexible terms by allowing the poor herdsmen to pay even in goats for the panels, the most popular of which can also power a radio.
A four-year project (1993-97) co-financed by the Department of Energy and the Global Environmental Facility in Zimbabwe has installed hundreds of solar home systems at an average 50-watt capacity around the country.
According to the Zimfo, a Harare-based monthly bulletin by the German Technical Co-operation in Zimbabwe (GTZ), many families in diverse remote villages around the country are now beneficiaries of safe drinking water from PV pumps donated by the organization.
The use of PV pumping equipment is still limited to drawing water for drinking but experts say with appropriate technology and adequate financial resources, it should diversify even into irrigation.
In addition to powering lights and water pumping, PV systems also play an important part in bringing rural communities out of isolation as many can now listen to radio and watch television programmes in the comfort of their homes.(SARDC)
