Alleviating poverty with solar energy
SOLAR energy has proved that it can directly contribute to poverty alleviation, transform economies and create jobs for millions.
Poverty is a condition where people’s basic needs for food, clothing and shelter are not being met.
In economics there is a theory that developing countries are caught in a vicious circle of poverty. It was put forward by the late Professor Nurske and it defines the cycle as a set of factors or events by which poverty, once started, is likely to continue unless there is outside intervention.
Despite this, most developing countries have abundant renewable energy sources including solar, wind and geothermal and that is a sure way of breaking the cycle.
According to Koffi Anan, over 600 million people still do not have access to modern energy.
The problem is that our current energy system benefit the rich, bypass the poor and they also reinforce poverty especially for women and people in the rural areas.
The poor are paying the highest prices of energy annually on energy-related products such as charcoal, candles, paraffin and firewood.
A lot of factors outlined in this article are poverty traits caused by lack of access to modern energy and they are actually good pin-pointers of people affected by it.
Here, one problem causing poverty brings in a host of its relatives creating that cycle of poverty which is so hard to break.
In the most rural areas where poverty is rife, there is no access to electricity.
Due to insufficient light after sunset, children’s learning opportunities are severely restricted affecting education in rural areas.
Most of the people in rural areas use paraffin lamps and candles for studying which provide poor light and emit harmful fumes.
These are also very expensive and hard to come by. Research in Kenya showed that when solar lamps are used, the average learning time per day increases and the same with performance at school.
This greatly improves the quality of learning for poor families improving their lives as well.
If in Zimbabwe we start to use solar lights and lamps, the quality of learning in rural areas will shoot up, bettering their lives and we can have one of the highest literacy rates in the whole world.
The health of people improves when people adopt solar energy, how? You may ask.
The fumes emitted by fossil combustion can cause irritation of lungs, soot and dust in particular contribute to respiratory illness and cardiac problems that include arrhythmias and heart attacks.
This will cause people to seek treatment consistently or death furthering poverty.
According to the report by the African Progress Report, 600 000 Africans die each year because of household pollution, half of them are children under the age of five.
A lot of our relatives are dying because of this but in our ignorance, solar products are clean and this can increase the life span of those in rural areas who can provide labour for our economy.
Access to safe, clean drinking water is now a challenge in developing countries like Zimbabwe, the poor have a hard time getting it.
In the rural areas women and children spend most of their time during daylight walking very long distances to water sources.
With the introduction of solar water pumps this problem has come to an end. Time is now being used in a much more productive way.
However, it is also important to note that the people in poverty cannot even afford to buy the solar pump whose start-up costs are very high so the government is supposed to chip in by installing the pumps for these people.
Our economy is agro-based, agriculture is our forte. Since the Iron Age started we have always relied on agri- culture for subsistence.
The ancient Shona kingdoms from the 12th century like Great Zimbabwe, Mutapa, and Rozvi had great economies which were sustained by agriculture.
Right now many families in rural areas practicing agriculture are one of the most affected by droughts and erratic rainfall.
One of the greatest ways to overcome this is to practice irrigation so a stable source of water is needed for them to have prosperous horticulture. They can use solar pumps.
Solar pumps help in supplying water for horticultural crops in gardens. Horticulture is a double-edged sword which works on all the sides of the society, the farmer earns income from the sales whilst making food available for the consumers, the community.
A lot of wood-lots, forests and trees have been already lost by people who use firewood as a source of fuel for heating, cooking and lighting.
Rural folks depend solely on this fuel, those in towns who cannot afford to buy electricity use the same as well or in cases when there is load shedding.
According to RECIPES, 80 percent of Zimbabweans use firewood as a source of fuel leading to deforestation.
This is contributing to global warming because there are no more living organisms that can absorb the carbon dioxide being emitted through human activities.
Solar energy is able to preserve this environment by producing the required energy for heating and lighting as a better alternative to firewood. Solar heaters for water and space heating (house heating) as well as lighting during night bring the answer.
Trajectories by international organisations claim that by 2030 the number of people in the category of people using wood, charcoal and dung is expected to rise from 2,4 billion to 2,6 billion in the world.
This will be doom for our future in Zimbabwe because it means that there will be greater competition for traditional energy leading to conflicts. Conflict brings poverty, we know it. Remember that conflicts can arise in our country as a result of competition for resources, we have in Africa good examples such as the just ended war in Angola, Sudan was split into two, and Nigeria is divided because of competition over fuel resources leaving thousands poor.
We surely do not want this to happen in Zimbabwe and solar energy can avert such conflicts leading to our prosperity.
Thousands of Africans are dying every week of fossil fuel-related accidents, same here in Zimbabwe. Deaths cause poverty, orphans, child-headed families are increasing. In some cases brought to book people are burnt, maimed, property destroyed, because of poor handling of fuels like candles and paraffin.
Take a visit to the paediatric wards in public hospitals you will have a perfect picture of women and children (under the age of six years and below) who are experiencing this.
Solar lamps and lights are helpful in stopping this driver of poverty cycle. They are not flammable and very safe to use, and toddlers are even able to handle them.
Even if they swallow, nothing is harmful to their health compared to swallowing paraffin.
Sub-Saharan Africa is experiencing an energy crisis, which generates 90GW, half of it is located in South Africa. However, there is an adage which says that, “in the midst of a crisis there is an opportunity”, the energy crisis presents entrepreneurial opportunities for locals.
Entrepreneurs can buy and sell solar products in Zimbabwe which can include solar lamps, panels, batteries, inverters, etc improving their earnings as well as enhancing people’s lives.
Our local utility and private players can invest in building solar systems that can transmit energy through the grid system to households or industries.
These can be solar farms or solar thermal systems which can produce electricity at a very large scale.
Electricity produced through this solar system is clean and friendly to the environment but the greatest thing that it provides employment for thousands and even millions in Zimbabwe.
Takaendesa Denhere is an independent researcher and writer on renewable energy. For feedback contact him on his email: takaendesadenhere@yahoo.com