e-CARE

My first few days at KITE have been full of learning about the project I will be working on. e-Commerce and Renewable Energy (e-CARE) is a private-public partnership through which entrepreneurs in rural and peri-urban areas can access a loan to purchase a Rural Business Centre. A typical RBC has phones, computers and solar panels to power them. Check out the links to a video and the project’s webpage on the side if you are interested in more details.

The project has potential to accomplish several things:

- Provide ICT * services to rural and peri-urban areas where the lack of electricity and/or infrastructure prevents people from accessing them using clean energy technologies.
- Train and provide tools to entrepreneurs so they can run successful renewable energy businesses.
- Provide value-added services on areas of renewable energy and benefit the community at large through more access to ICT services. This could translate into improvements in education and governance, and increased access to information relevant to agriculture or health.

A typical RBC that I had the chance to visit last week

When I say potential, I really mean potential. The reality is that there are many challenges; from solar panels not working to entrepreneurs not keeping good records or not making enough profit to pay back their loans.

The project is about to scale up so my role this summer is to help KITE understand the challenges faced by the RBCs by conducting surveys and spending time with the entrepreneurs! Some questions I'll be looking at are: Why are some RBC’s successful and others are not? Can and are they producing the social returns they are meant to? What kind of support can KITE provide to the entrepreneurs? What are the opportunities for creating awareness about renewable energy and benefiting the communities?

My placement is turning out to be a little different from other JF placements in that KITE has very specific expectations and tasks for me and there are five other volunteers working with KITE this summer. Shyam, another EWB JF, and two interns from Queen’s Project in International Development, QPID are working with me on e-CARE. Although we will be working on the planning and analysis together, we will make most visits to the RBC’s individually. Right now we are working on familiarizing ourselves with how a successful RBC could look like and what we could be looking for to assess how well it is doing. Soon we will be visiting centers and putting together a report with recommendations for the scale up. During these visits I will be able to spend some time in the communities where the RBC’s are located and see a little of the South of Ghana!

Mary and I outside of the KITE office

I am hoping that by working on e-CARE I’ll be able to understand how the access to ICT’s helps Dorothy**, how using a business approach to provide social services can contribute to development and how that looks in practice for an entrepreneur. Yep, big goals for a short placement! But that is why I have YOU to help me ask all the questions ;) KITE has other cool projects related to energy and enterprise development so I’ll be looking out to learn more about them too. Please keep your questions coming!

*Information and Communication Technologies
**Dorothy is EWB’s term for the people we work for and hope to have a positive impact on

my placement

My placement description is in!

The organization I'll be working for is called KITE, The Kumasi Institute of Technology and Environment. KITE is an Accra-based NGO focused in the energy sector. It's mission is to influence policy formulation and implementation and service delivery in favour of sustainable development through research, capacity building, project development and implementation in the areas of energy, technology and the environment in partnership with leading local and international organizations. Whoa! That was a long sentence!


Here are two examples of projects that KITE is working on now:

1. The Multi Functional Platform (MFP) project aims to promote income generation activities through access to decentralised energy services. The MFP is a 10hp diesel engine, mounted on a steel chassis that powers a variety of end-use equipment such as grinding mills, de-huskers, battery chargers and water pumps. The engine can also generate electricity for lighting, refrigeration and water pumping. Through the provision of these energy services, the MFP reduces both time and energy required to complete daily tasks.

2. eCARE aims to reduce poverty, accelerating the extension of clean energy and modern telecommunication services to rural and peri-urban users. eCARE does this by providing loans to rural entrepreneurs for the purchase and operation of Rural Business Centres (RBCs) equipped with computers, printers, telephones and solar photovoltaic systems. eCARE is public-private partnership between Ghana Telecom, the UN foundation, UNEP and KITE.

The details of my placement are still being decided but I'll be working on one of these two projects. So far it seems that I'll be spending some time in Accra with Mary Roach, an EWB long term volunteer, as my coach.

I'm really excited to be working with KITE! I think I'll learn a lot about the role that energy plays in poverty reduction; in fact, one of the goals of my placement is to understand it better! Also, I hope this placement will teach me a lot about empowerment of local entrepeneurs, especially women. Some questions that I have right now are: what kind of role can I play in KITE? what are KITE's expectations of this placement and how can I make sure that I can contribute the most to KITE's goals?

I'll post more information as soon as I know more. For now, I'll go back to studying for final exams.