THE CHALLENGE: Over 1.3 billion people – nearly 600 million of them in sub-Saharan Africa – do not have access to electricity. For rural populations, this means no light for urgent medical care in the evening or refrigeration for lifesaving medicines and vaccines. It means no energy in schools for late-in-the day study or IT education. It means no power to pump clean water for drinking, irrigation and sanitation. It means that one in six people today do not have energy to meet their most basic health, education and economic needs. OUR SOLUTION: Innovation: Africa (iA - www.innoafrica.org) uses solar energy to address the electricity needs of rural, poverty entrenched communities in sub-Saharan Africa. This energy powers schools, medical clinics, orphanages and water pumping systems. Since its founding in 2008, iA has completed over 90 solar projects in seven countries, transforming the lives of over 700,000 people. Each water pump provide rural communities with over 20,000 liters of clean water per day, and solar powered refrigerators have stored over 350,000 vaccines. The impact of clean water and power includes improved community health; entrepreneurial and other opportunities open up to women who no longer need to spend their days fetching water; running water improves sanitation and makes it possible for girls to attend school when menstruating; and the community is empowered by improved living conditions and the overall economic and educational opportunities made possible with the addition of electricity. WHY WE ARE DIFFERENT: iA is not the first to realize that solar energy is a natural solution for rural communities whose greatest natural resource is the sun. Governments, NGOs and businesses are all working on rural solar projects in their regions. But because the technology malfunctions and the technicians with the capacity to make repairs are not local and have no way of knowing of the breakdown, many of these projects are not sustainable. So how do we ensure the investments we make in rural communities continue to provide people with the services they need? iA has developed a two-part solution to this problem: 1. Community Enterprise: We believe community development only works when the community itself is invested. iA fosters this in the communities we serve by requiring that each community have both a solar committee to take ownership of the project and a business to underwrite its ongoing maintenance. The committee is a group of people invested in the project (local government, tribal leaders, heads of the women’s group, PTA members, clinic/school staff and more). They learn about solar technology in the months before their community’s installation, and they are responsible for maintaining their solar system after installation. This committee sets up a solar business in their own community, usually a solar powered cell phone charging station. In these villages, many people have cell phones, but need to walk many kilometers to charge them. The cell phone charging businesses in iA solar powered communities offer charging services for pennies a charge. This money is deposited into a bank account managed by the solar committee and used to maintain the solar system, so when bulbs and batteries need replacing or basic repairs need to be made, the community has the resources to make the repairs, as well as a committee to manage maintenance efforts. 2. Remote Monitoring: If a solar system fail in a way that cannot be simply repaired by a community, the results are traumatic: vaccines spoil, mothers give birth by kerosene lamp, students are unable to study and water stops flowing. Over the past four years, iA has been working with various companies to beta test remote monitoring technologies in order to find a cost effective way to monitor all 90 projects to make sure they continue functioning well. Today, we are monitoring iA projects using a small device that plugs into a cell phone SIM card installed in a community’s solar system and which collects output data. This data is then sent via text message to an online server, which allows iA staff to check in on each solar system from any computer with an internet connection. Using this information, we can predict problems before they start, perform remote diagnostics, optimize system design and more. iA is one of just a handful of organizations in the world working on this issue, and we think we may have found a cost effective solution.

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This two-part model combining both cutting edge technology and grassroots community empowerment has helped iA become recognized as a leader in the field solar energy as a solution to poverty and poverty’s impact. In 2012, iA was given Special Consultative Status to the United Nations Economic and Social Council, followed by an Innovation Award at the United Nation’s Global South-South Development Expo in 2013. More recently, iA was one of only three finalist for the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania’s 2015 Barry & Marie Lipman Family Prize, which is an annual global prize that celebrates leadership and innovation among organizations creating positive social impact. Just this past May, iA was a panelist for the Achieving Equitable Energy Access session at the Clinton Global Initiative Middle East & Africa Meeting in Morocco. iA has also been a speaker at the Skoll Global Forum, presented at Google and the Brookings Institution, and was featured in Forbes among other news publications.