Tana River County is one of the underserved counties with very few electricity connection. The population
in the rural areas mainly use kerosene for lighting. On the other hand, the county has very good solar
irradiation making use of solar energy for lighting a very good option. Unfortunately the solar gadgets are
unaffordable for the majority of the poor people. The few that manage to buy end up buying very poor
quality solar lanterns due to cost. The donor funded solar lantern project that was implemented through
Kenya Power as mentioned in paragraph 1.2 above enabled many poor household to get quality solar
lantern due to the design of low deposit and long payment period (low daily payments). The quantity
allocated for the county, 2,100 lanterns, was very low and only covered a few villages. The one lantern per
household makes it difficult for the students to compete for its use with the other household members. This
is why we are proposing to supply the solar lanterns this time through schools so that the lantern will be
dedicated to the students for their studies so as to improve their academic performance, their health, the
economy as well as the environment in general. The students will be allowed more than one lantern so that
they can also take to other members of the family. The lantern that we propose to use, Sun King Pro Easy
Buy, is approved by Lighting Global (see www.lightingglobal.org) and is designed as a table light suitable
for reading. It also has pay-as-you-go facility thus enabling the students to pay a small down payment of
Ksh 10 and a daily payment of Ksh 10. The lantern is available locally with very good support on warranty. The main objective of the project is to replace use of dangerous kerosene with high quality solar lanterns in
an affordable and sustainable way. Kerosene can cause fire, the fumes are dangerous to the health of the
users, it gives poor light, it is expensive and damaging to the environment. Using high quality solar lanterns
will be cheaper in the long run, is good for the environment (use of renewable energy), gives good quality
light, reduces fire risk and improves the health of the users. The other objective is to improve the academic
performance of the students through enabling evening studies with the quality light.
Many solar companies are making effort to make solar products affordable to the poor by use of pay-asyou-
go (PAYG), in order to cover a large population who are currently using kerosene for lighting so as to
convert them to use solar instead. To the poor population, the deposit required for these PAYG solar
gadgets (Ksh 1,000 or more) that is meant to cover risk of defaulting customers, is still high for many
especially in Tana River County. Assistance from GEF SGP will address this risk and enable us design a
program with very low deposit, low daily payment and long payment period so as to make high quality
solar lanterns affordable to the poorest of the poor who are currently using dangerous kerosene. Our aim is
to make solar lighting far much cheaper than kerosene, payable in the same way as kerosene (the poor
population is currently buying kerosene in very small quantities of Ksh 10 due to the high price).
Other similar programs to our proposal are Kenya Power solar lantern project in 13 off-grid counties that
include Tana River, where we were involved in the installation together with our partner, Equatorial
Sunpower Ltd. Another similar project is the Kenya Off-grid Solar Access Program (K-OSAP) to be
funded by the World Bank. This latter project is for 14 counties with low electrification that include Tana
River, and one of the sub-component is for solar home systems.
The specific results that the project will produce are that the pupils and students will switch from using
kerosene to quality solar lighting. The number of pupils and students using solar lighting by the end of the
project will be documented and this will be a measurable indicator of the success of the project.