"In the hilltop village of Murehe,
electricity is an exotic and faraway rumour. Like 97 per cent of the
population in Burundi, one of the world’s poorest countries, the
villagers here rely on candles and kerosene for a dim and flickering
light.
Then, a couple of months ago,
Murehe got pedal power. With the help of a United Nations agency and a
Canadian entrepreneur, the village acquired a device to charge small
lamps with 20 minutes of pedalling. And then there was light.
“Now, I can work inside my house at night,
and my children can work on their school assignments,” says Genevieve
Harerimana, who grows potatoes, beans and corn on her small farm. “In
the past month, they’ve had better school grades. I’m proud of them.”
What’s
even more significant is how the village got its lamps. This wasn’t a
traditional charity giveaway – the old-fashioned type of foreign aid.
Instead, there was a business plan, technical innovation, a system of
income generation with village enterprises and a partnership with a
profit-making company."
Congrats to UNICEF and NuRu Energy.
Read the Story in the Globe and Mail
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