Rays of Hope?

Time for an upbeat post, though you can be sure that it won't be all positive! I've been talking to a teacher, also a VSO volunteer, from one of our Rural Schools Solar Power (RSSP) project schools and it's worth summarising what she said since the effect of getting one of the installations has been galvanising.

Foro, the school and village in question, is in the Northern Red Sea Zoba fairly close to the coast. In fact it's not far from the ancient Auxumite Red Sea port of Adulis. Here, the climate can be infernally hot and food and water have been in short supply of late all of which conspired to lower morale amongst teaching staff.

Add to that the effect of not having an electricity supply (at the school, the nearby town manages 3 hours from it's generator per day) and fighting boredom becomes another factor. However, since the installation of a solar power pack as part of the RSSP things have changed both for students and teachers of the school.

It has been found that, not only can the panels run 5 full-size computers for most of the day, they can also run lighting for all of the evening, allowing teachers to follow the MoE's Distance Learning classes and also allowing the occasional spot of recreation in the form of playing music.

It should be emphasised that these are quite small (1.5Kw) as solar installations go and yet, the effect has been striking and my colleague even talks of it being such a morale booster that it has made all the difference this term.

A while ago I was going on about Eritrea’s advantages for Solar Power, and now we have concrete evidence that it can make a huge difference. Personally, I would like to see a concerted effort to deliver thin-client technology (many more workstations run from the same power supply; units sealed against dust and heat; much better control over computer viruses) in conjunction with medium-size solar power packs to all remote schools in this country.

It won’t happen for a while. Europe will have to exhaust its supply of high-power-consumption CRT’s and PC’s before Eritrea gets significant donations of LCD’s. But, it appears, we have finally made a good start.