Why and how is SGP important for your country?

"The GEF SGP Program is a very important one for my country because as an environmental preservation tool it is alleviating poverty. In fact this program allowed some of our rural populations, whom have never seen modern or conventional light in their life, to be able to get light through solar energy.

Additionally, with the Ivory Coast being a forest country, women are used to cook their food with a lot of wood. But with the modern, SGP-funded cooking stove made with soil sand, women are now using less wood. This results in forest preservation and conservation.

The SGP program also allowed us to save the life of sea or marine turtles, which travel from the Latino American coastal areas through the western African borders to lay eggs which will give life to baby turtles. In African countries, these eggs are often used as food.

Income generation projects that reduce poverty saved these turtle eggs and preserved these species, because all these sea turtles will have disappeared without this support. "