Solar Leapfrogs the Grid to Fight Poverty in Rural Tanzania
Solar energy is emerging as an important tool for fighting poverty in Tanzania, a country where 76% of energy comes from charcoal, wood, and biomass, and indoor air pollution kills more than four million people per year, more than HIV/AIDS and malaria combined. “In Tanzania, the population is predominantly rural and scattered in small villages across vast reaches of terrain, while the state-owned utility is chronically cash-strapped and urban-focused,” McDonnell reports. So the solution is to distribute small solar kits to farmers like 76-year-old Lusela Murandika, who says the dream of connecting the whole country to the grid is “a joke.” Just as mobile phones in Africa have largely leapfrogged land lines, “thousands of rural Africans are turning to solar as the solution, in a clean-energy boom that development experts say could become a catalyst for widespread economic empowerment.”