Zanzibar's 'solar mamas' are trained as technicians to help light up communities [View all]

When darkness came, so did the smoke.

Hamna Silima Nyange, like half of the 2 million people in Tanzania’s semi-autonomous archipelago of Zanzibar, did not have a house connected to the electricity grid. After sunset, she would turn to smoky oil lamps that provided the only light for her eight children to study.

”The light was too weak,” Nyange said. “And the smoke from the lamp hurt my eyes.”

Then one day a neighbor, Tatu Omary Hamad, installed solar panels and bulbs that lit her home with help from the strong sunlight along the Indian Ocean coast.

“Today we have enough light,” Nyange said.

Hamad is one of dozens of “solar mamas” trained in Zanzibar by Barefoot College International, a global nonprofit, through a program that brings light to rural communities and provides jobs for local women. So far in Zanzibar, it has lit 1,845 homes.

The program selects middle-aged women, most with little or no formal education, from villages without electricity and trains them over six months to become solar power technicians. It is one of a small number of programs in Africa including Solar Sister.

https://apnews.com/article/tanzania-solar-women-engineers-zanzibar-electricity-7d9eaa24c97e820f1f1f243512a5dd55

Bravo!