Electricity Creates Impact

A year ago, our partner Power Blox Africa in cooperation with GIZ, electrified the village of Mabime not far from Lago Pevo in Mozambique. They installed a few Power-Blox solar battery systems and a small nano-grid to connect the houses in the village. Although there were only a few households, the supply of electricity led to striking changes in the village, which are now even visible from space as recent images on Google Earth prove. 

About 80% of the village's population could afford our package-based prepay electricity service and used it actively last year. Despite the pandemic, new small businesses have sprung up and the village has experienced a real boom. The pilot project is now spreading throughout the region and other villages are looking to benefit from the electricity offer.

With our pilot project we wanted to show that it is possible to supply small villages with energy in other ways than only with solar lamps or solar home systems. Our nano-grid approach is particularly suitable for small villages with ten to about five hundred households. We also wanted to prove that Power-Blox can be used to create energy services that a large part of the rural population of Mozambique can afford. On this basis, we are preparing further projects in Vanuatu, Mali, Uganda, Rwanda and other countries. The challenge now will be, who will finance and scale up these capital-intensive infrastructure projects. The central question is no longer a technical one, but a financial one. Hopefully, we can resolve this issue soon so that the SDG7 goal can be achieved after all and other villages on the African continent can soon experience progress that is visible even from space. The time is ripe, let's do it!