IXL Social Enterprise Case Studies Energy January 2012 | Page 5

Revolutionizing the way to make energy affordable for everyone

Death by Candlelight
On August 22, 2009 at the Idodi Secondary School
in the Iringa Province of Tanzania, many of the 460
girls at the boarding school had been studying in their
dormitories, using candles as their only source of
reliable light.
One student accidentally knocked over the candle by
her bedside. The flames quickly engulfed her mattress
and the mosquito net surrounding it, and rapidly
spread throughout the entire dormitory block. As the
young women scrambled for their lives, some became
trapped. Twelve died and 20 others were seriously
injured. The dormitory itself burned to the ground.
Many children die each year as a result of fires
that are started by candles or unchecked kerosene
lanterns, despite having readily available
alternatives, such as solar powered lanterns. In fact,
SolarAid had just installed solar panels on the Idodi
school itself the June before.
As Idodi started to rebuild, SolarAid donated its
micro-lantern kits to the school so students would no
longer need candles.

Good lighting enriches life
Good lighting creates new opportunities for social
interaction and personal experience. It makes it
possible for individuals, parents and children,
siblings, friends, neighbors and guests to have
intensive conversation and to engage in creative
and recreational activities.
Lighting that is more convenient, less expensive,
and safer to operate creates the opportunity to
enjoy these social and personal activities more
frequently and with greater ease. It also creates a
feeling of safety and security from intruders and
potential harm.
Adequate light sources are widely available in
Africa, but millions of people rely on expensive
off-grid lighting
Grid electricity is cheap for users, but coverage is
expanding slowly and unevenly
In Africa, the grid provides cheap electricity to
users, but its reach is limited. In urban and periurban areas, over 30 percent of people have access
to grid electricity; however, this number drops to
under 2 percent in rural areas of the continent.5
Altogether, the electrical power grid reaches only
about 400 million of Africa’s 1 billion people,
leaving 600 million without a reliable source of
power.
Light bulbs powered by electricity from the grid
are less expensive to operate than many other
types of lighting in part because the power is
frequently subsidized, either directly by the
government or indirectly by industrial users who
consume large quantities of power.6 Costs vary
geographically, but powering a single light bulb
typically costs less than a few cents a day.7
Brownouts are common in areas where demand
for power frequently exceeds supply, or where
the generation and distribution infrastructure is
poorly