Agriculture – Page 32

GBI Presents “Rural ICT Solutions for Feed the Future”

Eric White, of the GBI team, gave a presentation to a gathering of USAID infrastructure specialists from missions around the world about the importance of investing in ICT infrastructure. He specifically highlighted the importance of wireless voice and broadband connectivity in meeting the US Government’s goals under the new “Feed the Future” program.

Food Security, Mr. White explained, can come either through improving domestic agricultural output and distribution or through improved cross-border trade facilitation. He highlighted ways that ICT infrastructure improves both. After pointing out that agricultural development is the flip side of rural economic growth Mr. White explained how numerous studies, at both the macro and micro level, have found a 10-1 relationship between expanding ICT coverage and GDP growth. A 10% increase in ICT penetration is generally associated with a 1% increase in GDP growth rates.

Mr. White then explained how it is possible to work with private sector firms to expand ICT access to rural people in developing countries. He pointed out the remarkable willingness-to-pay of even the very poor when it comes to communication. Even people living on only a few dollars a day are willing to pay up to 10% of their income for access to communication. Given that relatively large willingness-to-pay and a relatively low cost of capital it is in fact possible to reach every developing country resident with wireless technology through the smart use of targeted subsidies and investment in emerging low-cost technologies.

Eric White ftf presentation

View more presentations from Integra LLC.

February 26, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Cross Cutting, Environment, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Top 7 Reasons Why Most ICT4D Projects Fail (video)

Top 7 Reasons Why Most ICT4D Projects Fail (video) | e-Agriculture.

I’m sure that it is true that many ICT4D projects fail, as this sobering video alleges. To expect the majority to succeed, I would hasten to add, is unrealistic. Innovation in the use of technology demands a certain amount of failure in order that learning take place. In this sense failure is not necessarily bad. But for the most part, the examples given here have nothing to do with technology, and everything to do with the unrealistic expectations and naïveté of ICT4D proponents. Perhaps we should think of this as Development 101 for the tech crowd. I think that it should be required viewing.

February 23, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Biodiversity, Cross Cutting, Environment, Environment, Natural Resources Management, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Policy Development

Informatics, intellectual property and indigenous communities

One barrier to the use of all-important traditional ecological knowledge in the sustainable use and conservation of biodiversity is differing understanding of intellectual property. Just as people from the western legal tradition often make the mistake of interpreting apparently untenured land as terra nullius and available for appropriation (a justification for land claims by colonial powers), so too, patent laws have been used to lay claim to private rights on what had previously been a public good – a US patent on turmeric as a medicine for example. The differing approaches engender distrust, and impair cooperation on globally important issues.

I’m posting about this issue both as a cautionary tale about indigenous knowledge and informatics, and as one example of how ICT can be used to overcome barriers and promote cooperation.

A recent development aims to provide an interface between “source communities” and institutions that collect and manage data that can smooth the way towards the exchange and use of data. Mukurtu is an open source community archive platform that allows indigenous communities to manage their information and tag it. It began as a project of the Warumungu Aborigional community in central Australia. The platform is now being expanded to meet the needs of indigenous communities everywhere. As the Mukurtu archive explains:

Mukurtu is the Warumungu word for ‘dilly bag.’ Warumungu elders used to keep sacred items in dilly bags to ensure that they were kept safe. The elders were responsible for the safe keeping of the items as well as the knowledge that accompanied those items. Elders taught younger generations and opened the dilly bag when it was proper.

The Mukurtu Wumpurrarni-kari Archive is a ‘safe keeping place.’ The archive uses the cultural protocols of the Warumungu people to arrange, sort, and present content. Any piece of content that is not marked “open” (and thus viewable by the general public) is tagged with a set of restrictions. For example, Warumungu men and women can not view the same ritual materials. So any item restricted to women only would not be viewable by a male member of the community.

Mukurtu is potentially hugely important in protecting the integrity of sacred indigenous knowledge, making it available in appropriate ways while tagging it, in a way roughly analogous to a Creative Commons license, so that it can’t as easily be misappropriated. Mukurtu can help to improve ecoinformatics by making it more inclusive of cultural protocols. It also has potential as a tool for participatory planning by indigenous communities – especially those in a race for cultural preservation, like many Pacific island communities.

BBC interviewed Mukurtu founder Kimberly Christen in a podcast available here:

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice/digitalp/digitalp_20110222-1032a.mp3.

The interview begins around the 7:45 mark.

February 23, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Environment, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Agro/Environmental Data at Your Fingertips

The US Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) has announced the development of a forthcoming smartphone app that allows access to soil models for the location using GPS. Farmers can chose an optimum cultivation strategies based upon this model.

In much of the developing world, farmers may not have a lot of options for cultivation models (how and where to till soil, for example. Nevertheless, it is not hard to see how apps can help farmers to select what to plant, when to plant it, when to fertilize it and how to manage pests.

Under static conditions traditional ecological knowledge and cultural practices may produce similar or perhaps better results. In a changing world, that may not be good enough to ensure success.

One way to link traditional ecological knowledge with information and communications technology is through participatory processes, such as participatory GIS (see for example www.ppgis.net). In general, it is important to remember how important participation is when thinking about ICT for natural resource management and for development at large. ICT can empower people, but it can also be used against people, when access to information is controlled.

It’s really important to develop apps around the needs of users. USDA has done a great job of working with the agricultural community in the USA to develop tools that are relevant to their needs. Unfortunately, there’s still a huge gap between the app development community and rural poor of the world. It’s time we developed an app store for the poor.

Read more at Agro/Environmental Data at Your Fingertips from USDA ARS.

February 18, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Economic Growth & Trade, Financial Markets, Mobile, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

World’s First Virtual Card on Mobile Phone Launched in Africa

Customers in Africa can leapfrog conventional payment methods and benefit from greater financial access in an open banking system

Earlier this month in Nairobi, airtel Africa, Standard Chartered Bank, and MasterCard Worldwide announced the launch of the world’s first virtual card, known as the airtel 1time Shopping card. The airtel 1time Shopping Card operates off a wallet residing on a mobile phone. This innovative payment method aims to serve the global unbanked population in Africa, where there are close to 400 million mobile phone users with an unbanked population of 230 million households.

airtel Africa, Standard Chartered Bank and MasterCard (not pictured) collaborate on the first virtual card on a mobile phone

Michael Miebach, Division President, Middle East and Africa, MasterCard Worldwide observed how that airtel 1time Shopping card will connect consumers to the global marketplace, “Whether located in urban or rural communities, people will be able to participate in commerce from their hometown to anywhere in the world,” he commented.

This is how the system will work: airtel Africa customers in Kenya will soon be able to use their mobile phone to make online purchases from MasterCard merchants around the world and through a simplified online transaction. Each time an airtel customer is shopping online he or she will be able to request a single use shopping card number. The airtel money services then will generate a special 16 digit number that enables the completion of the transaction and when the transaction is completed, a confirmation message will be sent to the consumer’s handset.

Utilizing the mobile technology platform, airtel’s vast consumer penetration, combined with the financial and regulatory framework provided by Standard Chartered Bank, and global acceptance of MasterCard, consumers will be able to transact in a reliable, convenient and secure environment.

Airtel CEO Manoj Kohli

Speaking about the Groundbreaking innovation, Manoj Kohli, airtel’s CEO and Joint Managing Director, stated:

The airtel 1time Shopping Card…will deliver innovative and relevant mobile solutions that will help consumers overcome the daily challenges in their lives. The solution will offer consumers a robust e-commerce solution that delivers security, accessibility, acceptance, ability and a global reach

This single-use shopping card will soon be available in Kenya and rolled out to markets across Africa, subject to regulatory approvals.

February 15, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Health, Health, Health Systems, Infectious Diseases, Mobile, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

2011 mHealth Trends- Webinar

MobiHealthNews held their first webinar, last Thursday, February 11,to discuss mobile health news and trends that will likely emerge during the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) 2011 annual gathering this year in Orlando. The webinar, which was attended by health professionals and practioners around the world was the first of its kind to predict future innovations and trends in mobile health.

Brian Dolan, MobiHealthNews editor, discussed the increasing expansion of peripheral health devices. Most of these were manufactured to assist medical practitioners in the developed world, but a few stood out as contenders for development context:

iHealth blood pressure dock

The iHealth blood pressure dock, which allows you to monitor your blood pressure blood on your iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad .

iPhone ECG case developed by AliveCor called the iPhonECG is a great new device. This gadget turns your Apple iPhone 4 into Electrocardiogram (ECG) by putting it into a special $100 case, however it has not been approved for sale in the U.S. yet. This would possess the capability to help healthcare works in the field monitor electrical activity of the heart and detect any heart disease, allowing them to assess the patient’s level of risk more accurately.
Cellscope which turns a cell phone into a high-magnification microscope.is a revolutionary approach to curing infectious disease are a huge upcoming trend that will launch throughout the year and gain FDA approval.
The CellScope

The HIMSS will hold its annual conference on February 20-24, where hundreds of corporate and non-for-profit members come together to collaborate on their mission to transform healthcare through effective use of IT and management systems.. Each year a few innovations stand out among the crowd. Two years ago, one of the big themes that emerged was that an electronic medical records (EMR) vendor developed a smartphone application. Last year, tablets such as the iPad, emerged as catalysts for mHealth devices to grow in usage.

February 14, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Environment, Environment, Environmental Compliance, Forestry, Land Management, Natural Resources Management, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Water

A review of ICT for development: environment and natural resource management applications

Information and communications technology has a growing role in international development. Global connectivity through the Internet and through mobile phone technology is bringing people closer together to trade, share, and learn in a wide range of sectors, from agriculture, to manufacturing, financial services to water supply.

4In coming weeks and months, we will feature innovations in ICT for environmental protection and the sustainable use of natural resources in these pages. Today we will begin with an overview of some of the different ways in which ICT can be used, and give a few examples of innovative products that we think can make a difference. Someday, we would like to have an exhaustive survey of tools. Those of you who are reading this are almost certainly already familiar with the topic. If that’s the case, you’ll know the power of social networking. Let’s do a little social networking of our own and share ideas about ICT for natural resources – either innovations that you feel the world should know more about, or ideas that you have for innovations that should be brought to the attention of technology community.

ICT can make a difference in natural resource management in several ways. A major contribution the improvement of information used for decision making and access to that information. The science of data management is called informatics, and sometimes when the term is used for environmental sciences, it is called ecoinformatics. A key to good data management is interoperability. To better understand trends and causal relationships, it is necessary to combine data from different sources. Doing this requires the development of standards and protocols for describing phenomena, as well as quality control to ensure that the knowledge that results is based on facts. We will review ecoinformatics in more detail in later posts; for now, have a look at Data Basin, a fantastic tool for curating data that can be located in space and time using maps. Data Basin provides a way to host and manipulate data sets to create knowledge – to tell a story based upon observations. But it goes further – it includes a reputation system for ranking data sets, and social networking tools to bring data users together to interpret, critique, and collaborate in the development of knowledge products.

Of course, information is not very useful if it is not accessible. And access to reliable information has long been a barrier to effective decision-making in many parts of the world. This is changing. Not only is direct access to the Internet expanding, but mobile smartphones can be used in many parts of the world to send and receive data. An exciting development is the use of mobile applications, or “apps”, to address specific needs. For example, the World Bank DataFinder app can be used to quickly access economic data from the World Bank’s own data servers. (Unfortunately, the first version is exclusively written for the iPhone, a device not readily available in much of the developing world.) Mapping apps are proliferating, allowing access to topographic and thematic maps. And farmers can use apps to learn the price of, and even sell, their commodities. The World Bank is also sponsoring an Apps for Development competition to find new uses for World Bank data recently made publicly available. Unfortunately, many of the submissions deal with global policy issues and there are few practical tools for natural resource management, agriculture, health, and other pressing development issues on the ground. This will change once a demand from the field emerges, and we find better ways to link application developers with development and natural resource management practitioners. In 2009 USAID sponsored a competition, Development 2.0 through NetSquared, a technology service for social benefit organizations sponsored by Techsoup Global, a non-profit organization that helps NGOs to access donations of hardware, software, and training from the ICT industry. Innovative partnerships such as USAID’s collaborations with NetSquared and NetHope. NetHope is a partnership of technology providers and humanitarian organizations working to solve technology challenges. NetHope is a Global Broadband Innovations Initiative partner.

The ability to remotely sense and monitor natural resources is an important new tool for scientists and managers. In future weeks we will explore how ICT is being used to monitor global change, monitor biodiversity in the tropical forest canopy, monitor coral reefs, track the chain of custody of logs harvested in West African rainforests, and detect forest fires in Central America. ICT has the potential to help identify potential links between a changing climate and disease outbreaks, forest and agricultural pests and food prices.

ICT can have significant affects where time lags are a barrier to achieving goals. For example, early responses to emergencies such as forest fires or pest/disease/invasive species outbreaks are much more cost effective and more likely to be successful than late responses. It can also make a difference when markets are involved. For example, carbon credit monitoring can be made much for efficient, and importantly, the confidence in the effectiveness of the investment can increase when time lags concerning data about the status and extent of the resource can be eliminated. Note how the artificial boundaries created by thinking in terms of “sectors” such as agriculture, environment, and health, can blur when using data in innovative ways made possible through ICT tools.

ICT can also empower communities by enabling them to collect their own data, making it possible to overcome barriers to effective participation due to nonexistent or inaccessible information, and lessen their dependence upon often inaccessible outside experts. Using ICT communities can monitor resource use, integrate traditional ecological knowledge with scientific data, and participate as full partners in decision-making processes. A participatory Geographic Information Systems (computer mapping) community already exists, and an international grassroots mapping network is sharing progress using low-cost tools such as digital cameras and kites or helium balloons to create highly detailed area maps.

We will also review some yet unmet needs that ICT can fulfill, such as:

Real-time access to information to help port inspectors to identify pests while performing their duties (e.g., warehouses, docks)
Access to keys to help parataxonomists working to identify specimens of rare or harmful species
Remote upload of information from field observations and query of decision support tools that can be used in a dynamic situation like a disaster response.
Information on spot markets for natural resource products and for reservations and logistics for remote tourism facilities such as ecotourism operations, often associated with parks and protected areas.

Some additional considerations involve the possibility of social barriers to the use of ICT. For example, women and men may have different access to ICT, as well as different needs and different ways of approaching its use. Frequently, access to tools and equipment by women remains problematic even when ICT is available to the community. We will look for examples of how use patterns, specific needs, and cultural contexts are being used to maximize women’s participation in technology transfer. More technology-savvy youth may dominate ICT, limiting its use by elders and thereby failing to access important historical knowledge and perspectives. As with gender, care should be taken in introducing technologies to ensure that its use doesn’t promote inequality or skew the generation of knowledge.

Here are some tools for natural resource management that we will look at in more depth.

1) GPS. Global Positioning System. Used for recording location, useful for georeferencing data entry and producing maps. Often integrated into cameras and smartphones. Geotagging photographs links a visual record to an observation.

2) GIS. Geographic Information System. Manipulates georeferenced data in “map layers” to permit overlaying and comparing different types of information. GIS can integrate georeferenced field observations (e.g., from GPS) with remotely sensed images from satellites and aircraft, and digitized maps of terrain, landcover, infrastructure, demography, etc. Extremely complex to use and expensive in commercial versions; open source GIS is growing rapidly to overcome barriers to entry by communities, small businesses and local government. The discipline of participatory GIS (PGIS) focuses on making tools and techniques available to communities for natural resource planning. The PGIS community provides peer to peer technical assistance through a web site and email list.

3. Telecommunications. Voice, text (SMS) messaging, and other data transmitted over handheld devices used in natural resource management for managing, monitoring and reporting.

4. Remote sensing. Some satellite remote sensing data has been made freely available and is accessible providing the technology is in place to receive and process it. Other data, primarily from high resolution commercial instruments, can be extremely expensive. Efforts to overcome these barriers include:

Terralook, a service developed by NASA and provided by USGS includes georectified LANDSAT and ASTER images as high resolution JPEG compressed images. Terralook provides a free opensource viewer that allows users to do basic measurements, annotations, and classifications of the images.

Several projects have supported the development of a hybrid GPS and camera system that can be mounted on fixed and rotary winged aircraft for mapping along transects, with software to connect tiles to provide a large-scale georeferenced image that can be used with GIS systems (high resolution cameras have been able to capture images as small as 5 cm at 1500′ elevation).

Automated remote monitoring. An early example of the use of ICT for natural resource management was the US Forest Service’s Remote Automated Weather Stations (RAWS) deployed throughout western forests in the US to monitor fire weather. Advances in technology now make it possible to create environmental sensor networks using high-tech miniature robots to record minute changes in the environment and transmitting the data to computers through telecommunications networks or satellite uplinks. In the USA, a consortium of research institutions has created a National Ecological Observatory Network to monitor environmental impacts and changes. With the costs declining, these tools will soon be within reach of developing countries, to monitor critical watersheds, environmental impacts of extractive industries, and the habitats of rare and endangered species.

Technology transfer is an important tool for achieving global goals for economic development, biodiversity conservation, and the protection of ecosystem services. It can help to advance effective governance and rule of law through a more informed, mobilized public and better monitoring of resource use to ensure that it is lawful as well as sustainable. As a package, better governance and better information will provide an improved chance to lift the rural poor of the world out of poverty.

February 13, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Climate Change, Democracy & Governance, Environment, Environment, Health, Land Management, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Pollution Prevention, Water

Open source software and participatory GIS

I work with a small NGO in the Cook Islands called Te Rito Enua. We recently concluded a pilot project funded by the Asian Development Bank to test the use of participatory GIS techniques to help develop community-scale climate adaptation strategies. Some of our key findings echo those Oregon State University scientists Sally Duncan and Denise Lach. As reported in the People and Place blog, they observe that

“Exchange of ideas and knowledge with the assistance of a technology that is both analytical and visual draws participants into new kinds of inquiry, calling upon broader kinds and definitions of knowledge and experience. In such a setting, GIS technology lends itself to the mapping of ideas as well as landscapes.” (emphasis is mine)

In our own work, we found that that the approach provides communities with the tools to assess climate risk according to their own frames of reference. Linking models with personal experience and traditional ecological knowledge gave the communities tangible evidence of climate risk that empowers them to own the problem and develop personal and collective responses based on their own needs and priorities. The participatory GIS process highlights behavioral and development issues that affect the vulnerability of individual households and the community at large. There was a discernable sense of empowerment by participating communities in developing vulnerability maps and planning on the basis of the spatially organized information.

Replicating the process is problematic though. We opted to use expensive high-end commercial GIS software to match the system used by the government. All the GIS expertise in the country (basically 2 people at the start of the project) were schooled in the use government system. We needed to work with those people. But the high end systems are a formidable barrier to entry; acquiring the software, hardware, and training costs thousands of dollars. Communities and NGOs lack those resources, and the emerging, computer-savvy generation lacks learning opportunities. In our final report, we recommended the use of open source software and support for regional training to build up the GIS community.

Fortunately the support for open-source GIS is growing fast. Some resources for beginners include:

The Participatory GIS Forum (www.ppgis.net) (and be sure to see the very helpful email list for PPGIS, links on the site).

Mapping Across Borders/Digital Distractions blog ( http://mikedotonline.wordpress.com/ )

Quantum GIS open source software (www.qgis.org)

And a new site, Training Kit on Participatory Spatial Information Management and Communications (http://pgis-tk-en.cta.int/)

Don’t forget that good data layers can often be found at Data Basin, and you can upload and share your files there. (www.databasin.org)

I’ve experienced significant resistance to participatory mapping in the past from the GIS technical community. It is true that you can produce complete garbage in GIS. And garbage, in planning, can be dangerous. But the answer doesn’t lie in treating geospatial planning as an esoteric art and shunning the novices. The answer lies in widening the pool of experts and providing support for grassroots initiatives. Duncan and Lech observe:

“The frequent repetition of the phrase “re-framing the debate” during focus-group discussions highlighted the progression from the one-way communication model, in which scientists impart their findings, to the dynamic process of engaging GIS technology as a tool of inquiry, mediation, and communication. Ideas suggested for a broader debate included making assumptions explicit on GIS maps, using the power of GIS to examine new questions, and sharing responsibility for new kinds of learning. …”

Duncan, S. and Lech, D. 2006. GIS Technology in Natural Resource Management: Process as a Tool of Change. Cartographica 41:3, 201-205. DOI: 10.3138/3571-88W4-77H2-3617.

Sounds like development to me.

[The Te Rito Enua project report can be downloaded at http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1735507/ADB%20SGI%20report/Final%20Report-web.pdf]

February 13, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Climate Change, Democracy & Governance, Environment, Environment, Environmental Compliance, Health, Land Management, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Policy Development, Water

Use of neural net classifiers to map invasive plants using remote sensing data

Over the past year, I’ve been working with a Cook Islands NGO, Te Rito Enua, with funding from the Asian Development Bank, to develop a pilot project on participatory GIS as a tool to assist island communities to develop climate adaptation strategies. While there, Mona Matepi, president of TRE, called my attention to the problem of invasive vines on the island. Three species of woody vines* are colonizing the island forests, causing massive deforestation. They overtop and kill trees, replacing the forest with a solid jungle of vines. Since Rarotonga is dependent upon surface water for its entire supply, and since vines were killing the trees in its forested watershed, it seems like a non-trivial issue. Nobody knows how the vines will affect water supply. Will they reduce surface water supply through evapotranspiration? Will they hold the soils as well as the trees they are replacing? How will they respond to the more frequent cyclones and droughts that climate models predict? And, if they are a problem, how can they be controlled? Many questions to answer – our challenge right now is to find support for research into the issues and the options available. If no one does anything, there’s a chance, and its not a tiny one, that there could someday be a humanitarian crisis that would have severe implications for one of the dwindling number of robust Polynesian cultures remaining.

I asked University of Maryland doctoral candidate Benjamin White, a remote sensing specialist, for advice on how to illustrate the extent of the vine infestation. The island is rugged and steep, difficult to map on foot. But I was able to take some measurements using a handheld GPS unit. Ben offered to have a go at classifying the vines using my field observations as training data. Commercial remote sensing imagery provider GeoEye donated high-resolution (4m and 1m) satellite images. Ben developed a sophisticated neural net classifier, and processed the images as R/G/IR reflectance, reflectance-based NDVI, principal components, mean texture and a quick reflectance to “dense vegetation” classification. The final result was uploaded to Google Earth for visualization purposes; Google Earth data is not useful for this kind of application, but overlaying the classification results on a Google Earth image gives a context in terms of location and topography. Additional satellite imagery could provide complete ground coverage and (subject to availability) time series to measure change in land cover.

I’m hoping that the image will drive home how bad the problem is, and mobilize some support for Te Rito Enua and the Cook Islands government to get a handle on the vine problem.

Heartfelt thanks go to Ben White and the University of Maryland Geography Department, GeoEye, and the Asian Development Bank for support.

* the vines are Cardiospermum grandiflorum, Mikania micrantha, and Merremia peltata.

via GREEN HAND.

February 13, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Connectivity, Environment, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Solar Nexus: Reliable Solar Power, Anywhere

Eric Youngren, founder of Solar Nexus International, serves as a catalyst for reliable, rural power solutions in the developing world. The Solar Nexus power center is an innovative solution for electricity that brings the quality tested North American off-grid solar installations to areas of the world where similar systems are rarely found.

The SolarNexus is an all-encompassing system, where all the high quality electronics necessary to convert the energy generated by the solar PV panels (or any other source of renewable energy) into power that is stored in batteries for later use.

SolarNexus power centers are sold as part of a complete package, shown here. The package includes PV panels, deep cycle batteries, mounting hardware, code-compliant wiring, and instructions

SolarNexus power center is designed for permanent indoor installation and includes instructions, training and support to ensure successful installations and build capacity in local communities. To understand how the Solar Nexus system operates, view this great introductory explanation on the Solar Nexus International website

Installation was performed by Ensol, of Dar es Salaam, TZ Photo Credit: Eric Youngren

A project was launched in April 2010, Solar Nexus International shipped 30 complete SolarNexus systems — including PV panels and deep cycle batteries — to Tanzania for a project run by the U.K. based charity SolarAid. The systems would be used to provide light and power to schools that were beyond the radius of the electricity grid. The mission was to replace the old, smokey, and potentially dangerous kerosene lanterns with effective, compact fluorescent light. This improved visability would allow more local children to attend the schools.

Eric traveled to Tanzania to assist in the training of local installation crews and help facilitate aptitude. One main goal of the founder and his company is to improve the knowledge, skills and capacity of the solar installers in the developing world to ensure the system’s sustainability and overall impact.

Visit the Solar Nexus International website and their blog for more information on current projects

February 10, 2011/by actualize