When the sun sets in Ethiopia, eight out of 10 citizens must resort to unhealthy lighting sources for basic daily activities like cooking or studying. These sources include kerosene lamps, wood fires, and expensive—but often unreliable—battery-powered appliances.
With support from the
Lighting Africa/Ethiopia
initiative, a growing number of people now have access to clean, inexpensive solar power to light their homes and grow their businesses instead. The IFC-World Bank program works with manufacturers and distributors of lighting products, among other partners, to build markets for off-grid lighting products and promote their use in sub-Saharan Africa. Shukri Dinsefa, who sells farm products and household goods, including solar lights, to members of his local farming cooperative in the town of Butajira, is one of many who benefit from the initiative.
“Now the children of co-op members can study at night,” Dinsefa says. They are enjoying cleaner air as opposed to the smoke they had to inhale from fuels they used to use.”
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