Energy For Opportunity recently returned from a visit to a new project in the villages of Kasumpe and Kamaso, Koinadugu District where we have teamed up with Travis Wilkins, a friend of EFO from his time in Sierra Leone, to implement a water pumping and irrigation pilot. Typically, Sierra Leone has one growing season and this leads to some hard times before harvest. By introducing the water pumping/irrigation we are hoping to add additional growing opportunities during the dry season and also expand the amount of land that can be farmed by moving away from time consuming hand watering ...

Forbes recently held an interview with Energy For Opportunity's Director Simon Willans. The online post came out on January 31st and highlights some of the work EFO is doing in Sierra Leone. http://blogs.forbes.com/helencoster/2011/01/31/forget-the-grid-can-solar-power-light-africa/

Here is an interesting article on the impacts of small scale solar electricity systems in rural Kenya. These systems are very, very similar to ones we have tried in Sierra Leone and we have seen many of the same results. The situation is a bit trickier here in that the rural population tends to have less and more seasonal income than Kenya but there are other less expensive, two light systems that fill that gap. One of the very insightful things from the article is that the system was bought primarily to charge the household mobile phone and lighting was ...