Solar initiative brings power to clinics and jobs to displaced youths in Cameroon

In Cameroon’s Northwest and Southwest regions, where a civil war has dragged on for 10 years, abundant sunshine has become a source of hope and opportunity for hundreds of young internally displaced people, and a lifeline for the next generation. The fighting has choked off job opportunities for youth and worsened the collapse of basic public services. Rural communities here face acute electricity shortages and have very limited access to quality health care. Mothers often give birth in the dark, and their children risk missing vital vaccines because clinics lack reliable power to provide lighting or appropriate cold storage for vaccines. To address these threats to newborn survival across local health centers, Cameroonian clean-energy company Solar Bright Future, a subsidiary of local NGO Action for Advancing Sustainable Development (CAASDEV), set out to equip maternity wards with solar power in crisis-affected facilities through a program that trains young people displaced by the conflict. The company installs solar power systems for maternity lighting and solar-powered vaccine cold-chain systems for safe vaccine preservation, with temperature monitoring. Their systems can also support equipment such as echography or ultrasound machines and sterilization devices, depending on system capacity. Equipment that runs on solar power at the Tugi integrated health centre in the Northwest region of Cameroon. Image courtesy of Ndze Noel Lifogha/Solar Bright Future. The tragedy of the twins Ndze Noel Lifogha, chief executive of Solar Bright Future, said in an interview with Mongabay that the initiative grew out of a tragedy at a clinic without…This article was originally published on Mongabay