The operators sell power for just a few hours a day, charging high tariffs, often with sub-standard wiring. Its assessment found 30 informal diesel mini-grid operators serve households and businesses within the camps. In 2019, the Smart Communities Coalition supported MAKE Change for Refugees, a set of activities seeking to advance integrated energy planning in Kakuma and Kalobeyei. The rest have to rely on expensive, unstable and unreliable alternative sources. Only 1 per cent of over 200,000 refugees in the camp and the adjacent Kalobeyei settlement have access to electricity through the main power grid. I am grateful to have access to electricity,” she says. She is pleased to now have constant and reliable energy through the Okapi mini-grid, which is located a few metres from her shop. Her customers used to get frustrated when the electricity was continually cut off. This was then leveraged with further support from EDP Portugal and Energy for Impact UK, to double the size of the mini-grid and further expand the number of beneficiaries.īitisho Tusambe, a Congolese refugee and mother of three, runs a shop that offers printing and photography services and sells mobile phone accessories. He later set up Okapi Green Energy as a private company and received financial support from Power Africa and the Smart Communities Coalition, via the US African Development Foundation, to set up a 10-kilowatt solar mini-grid. He initially started a community-based organization to help find solutions to the camp’s energy needs. He arrived in Kakuma 12 years ago after fleeing fighting in his hometown in the Democratic Republic of Congo. “When I wake up every day, I feel that I need to make a positive contribution to the community that I'm living in.” If you had a torch you would have to buy new batteries every week,” he says. “I decided to go into green energy because when I came here, we were really struggling to get light. The Congolese refugee is the brains behind this outfit, which provides clean energy to 200 businesses inside and outside the camp, as well as many refugee households. Vasco Hamisi is hard at work checking on the solar panels at Okapi Green Energy Limited, in northwestern Kenya’s Kakuma refugee camp.
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