140 million in Africa Could Access Clean Lighting by 2015
A new report by the joint IFC-World Bank Lighting Africa Program projects that Africa is set to become the world’s largest market for clean off-grid lamps, with up to 140 million people having access to better lighting by 2015. The market for quality off-grid lighting products in Africa has seen a 300 percent growth in sales in the past three years.
The Lighting Africa Market Trends Report 2012 – Overview of an the Off-Grid Lighting Market in Africa, provides a snapshot of the region’s off-grid lighting market in Africa. In Africa 600 million people still rely on expensive, ineffective, and sometimes dangerous lighting sources, such as kerosene.
Lighting Africa: A Spotlight on Development
Hundreds of millions of people across Africa lack affordable, reliable and effective lighting and struggle at homes, work, and schools.
When the sun sets on communities across the continent, darkness forbids even the most basic activities, such as cooking and reading. Development is stunted when students cannot study and businesses must close because of a lack of light.
Kerosene lamps and candles have proved poor solutions to these problems:
they are often expensive, can be dangerous, and emit barely enough light to brighten a small room.
Kenyan Women Light Up Villages with Solar Power
Let there be light. And thanks to the efforts of rural women in one of the most remote corners of the Kenyan republic, lights turn on as night falls at the end of a sunny day.
Tucked away in the remote villages of Olando and Got Kaliech in rural Kenya, residents in this poor outpost in south-western Kenya today have light after darkness falls. The light is thanks to Phoebe Jondiko, Joyce Matunga and Phoebe Akinyi, the three solar “women engineers” who have literally switched on the lights in the two villages with a view to lighting up more villages in the remote Gwassi Division in Suba District.
Savannah Cement appoints first CEO
DANGOTE Cement outlined massive expansion plans that would culminate in the firm becoming the continent's largest supplier of the product in the coming years.
The company, owned by Africa's richest man Aliko Dangote, said to be the richest man in the continent, plans to commission plants in several countries thereby 50 million tonnes per annum (mta).
