Solar Aid's Light a Village project, backed by the Turner Kirk Trust, is scaling up and on track to provide sustainable lighting to 100% of homes in Kasakula, Ntchisi District by 2025. Plans are also being progressed for a nation-wide rollout of the solar lighting systems in Malawi.
In 2021, Solar Aid piloted its Light a Village project with funding from the Turner Kirk Trust. Launched to solve the lack of access to affordable, clean and safe lighting across rural Africa, the project’s pilot provided solar lighting to 500 households in the village of Kasakula, Malawi. Kasakula is a rural community where 97% of inhabitants live in extreme poverty.
The initiative employs an innovative ‘Energy-as-a-Service model which allows households to receive instant access to electricity using a solar home system. This provides energy at a cheaper rate than hazardous and polluting lighting sources such as kerosene lamps, which are frequently used by off-grid communities in Africa.
This project is providing homes and schools safe access to clean and sustainable light, improving quality of life. This enables economic development in a way that is scalable, supporting SolarAid’s mission to achieve universal energy access, leaving no one behind.
A successful second phase of the Light a Village project provided solar-powered lighting to a further 2,000 homes and 12 schools in Ntchisi, Malawi. The Turner Kirk Trust was a major funder of this phase. Since launching, SolarAid has formed instrumental partnerships in the Ntchisi region, including with the Department of Energy and local Chiefs.
The project is now scaling further across Ntchisi and beyond. In June 2024, Dr. Ewan Kirk, co-founder and co-director of the Turner Kirk Trust, visited the project in Malawi to see the work on the ground and to meet with Malawi's Ministry of Energy.
The Ministry is working with SolarAid on a district-level scale-up in Ntchisi, agreeing to support in mapping the entire district. This could see the project reaching in the region of 67,500 households in Ntchisi. Located in Malawi’s central region, Ntchisi District has a total population of 317,069.
The third phase of the project is now well underway, with funding secured to deliver solar systems to 7,500 homes in Kasakula, Ntchisi, with 4,076 of these already installed. SolarAid’s goal is to provide lighting to 100% of homes in Kasakula by 2025. Funders of this phase include the Dutch Postcode Lottery DOEN, and the Good Energies Foundation, and the World Bank.
A Dutch firm, Hystra, is on the ground in Malawi helping SolarAid refine their business model based on current data. This will aid them in scaling up to provide light to additional regions in Malawi.
Malawi’s Ministry of Energy has agreed to help with nationwide mapping to identify locations to reach on a national scale. The project is gaining rapid traction, and SolarAid has ambitions to start work in other countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
The Light a Village project is an excellent example of the Turner Kirk Trust's values in practice. Funding the Light a Village pilot has acted as a springboard for discovering a scalable solution to sub-Saharan Africa's lack of electricity access.
Now on the precipice of lighting up a large proportion of Malawi and with neighbouring countries interested, the project is becoming a sustainable solution with the potential to have transformative effects across an entire continent.
“This is why we do what we do at the Turner Kirk Trust. By enabling Solar Aid to experiment with new models to end energy poverty without fear of failure, we have landed on a sustainable and scalable solution that can be replicated anywhere in the world. Seeing the Light a Village project in action on my recent visit to Malawi was both rewarding and incredibly exciting.”
