Schoolchildren in Kierma, Burkina Faso, will now have access to electricity to revise their lessons at home. Lagazel has just inaugurated an innovative solar station to supply them with electricity. The station was inaugurated on December 14, 2018. The project, which is in its first edition, includes seven solar stations. They are located in the rural school of Kierma, a town in the Kombissiri division, in the province of Bazèga, located in central Burkina Faso. The project was sponsored by the French Embassy in Burkina Faso and the NGO Électriciens sans frontières.
Each station will recharge 40 solar lamps during the day. At night, the energy will serve as lighting for students to study their lessons and do their homework. For Jean-Piere Cerdan, Secretary General of Electriciens sans Frontières, the project will be beneficial in more than one way: “it brings not only a technical innovation, but above all an innovation in use that is highly relevant for rural electrification. The students go home with a lamp recharged at school by a photovoltaic panel system,” he said. In this Burkinabe locality, several children still used the oil lamp to light up at night. This had an impact on the eye health of the children and also presented real fire risks. From now on, more than 300 students will be able to benefit from light.
Lagazel is an African company specialised in the marketing of solar products in Africa. Its objective is to provide local solutions to households still without electricity on the continent. In Burkina Faso for example, only 3% of the rural population had access to electricity in 2016.
Luchelle Feukeng