By Elias Ntungwe Ngalame
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| Solar powered mobile phone chargers |
IDANAU, Cameroon (PAMACC News) - It is 11 pm in Idenau, a fishing village community
located on the coastal fringes of the Cameroon- Nigeria divide. Joan Dione, 58, fish trader in the locality and
her two daughters are busy drying fish.
Fish business in this renown fishing habour is on the
increase thanks to the installation of solar energy that has significantly
reduced post post-harvest losses.
“We can now dry our fish even at night with the use of
solar ovens,”says Dione, smiling.
“The demand for fish is very high, with many customers
coming from big cities in Cameroon and neighbouring countries like Nigeria and
Gabon.”
Dione says the fishing community in Batoke and Idenau
council areas have been gripped by a frenzy of commercial activities since
solar panels arrived some two years ago.
“We now work day and night to meet the high demand and
this has significantly increased our family income,” adds Dione. “We can also
preserve fresh fish in refrigerators thanks to the availability of
electricity.”
Dione’s
daughter Sharon, 23, quickly turns on the lights in a store room where they
have stocked baskets of dried fish ready for the market.
“Now we dry over 25 baskets a day after good harvest.
Two years ago, drying this quantity of fish in a day was impossible,” she says.
“We smoked fish using wood from the mangrove forest
and with limited access to wood our production was less than 5 baskets a day.
“More to that the process of using wood energy was so
difficult. It emitted smoke that was dangerous to our health. The arrival of
solar energy here has changed everything.”
Some kilometers away, Njombe Ikome, store keeper with
the Idenau rural council reflects on how the joint efforts to provide solar
energy to the community have changed the lives of the villagers in the area in
general.
“Our children can now do their school homework thanks
to solar light at night and they are doing well in school,” he says.
“Idenau is a
business community and so the use of cell phones for communication with
business partners is very important. Now we charge our phones easily and we are
able to make calls at all the times to our business partners. This has eased
business transactions and improved the living standards of the people here considerably,
especially women and youths.”
The Idenau and Batoke population are pleased that
electricity generated from the sun has finally come to relieve them of energy
shortage, yet they remain worried that the effects of climate change are still
grounding development in their community.
“Prolonged
droughts and heavy floods when the rains come are still a big problem to us. It
distorts our planting calendar and this affects food crop production, says John
Ewang, a 44-year-old farmer in Batoke, about 10km from Limbe in the South West
region of Cameroon.
“We are told these are problems of climate change and
we wonder when the government and our local councils will provide a lasting
solution.”
John Ewang’s worries are similar to those in many
countries in Africa, where droughts, erratic rainfall, floods are wrecking
havoc causing high rates of food scarcity and malnutrition.
World leaders meeting in Paris at the COP21 in
December 2015 agreed that there is urgent need to provide a therapy for climate
change.
“There is urgent need to provide a therapy for climate
change and renewable energy is cardinal to this drive,” Christina Figures,
UNFCCC Executive Secretary said at the launch by the UN and partners of a $5
billion initiative to expand renewable energy capacity in Africa at COP21 in
Paris France.
The UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also told the UN climate change conference
(COP21) in Paris that saving energy is a triple-win in the battle against
global warming, providing money and ending poverty.
“The production and use of energy is responsible for
more than half of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions. That means energy
is also more than half of the solution. We need sustainable energy to reduce
global greenhouse emissions and avert the risks of runaway climate change,” Ban
Ki-moon said, stressing that clean energy is equally important for ending
extreme poverty.
“Saving energy is a triple-win solution. It can save
money, reduce emissions, and provide additional energy capacity,” he added,
noting that renewable energy technologies are becoming cheaper and more
competitive, with many people accessing energy for the first time thanks to
solar panels, wind turbines or small hydro power plant.
That new energy policy according to scientists is a
switch to renewable energy. The main scientific authority on climate change,
the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has underscored that
renewable energy is one of the major ways of curbing climate change because it
is clean and does not emit dangerous greenhouse gases into atmosphere.
In addition to its importance to climate change,
there’s another compelling reason to develop renewable resources in Africa with
a rapidly growing energy demand. As acute as Africa’s energy poverty is today,
it could become even worse without aggressive efforts to develop more resources
scientists say. The International Energy
Agency,IEA ,predicts that even if a projected one billion people gain access to
electricity by the year 2040, rapid population growth will mean that some 530
million people will still live without it. And as Africa shifts from a
primarily rural society to an increasingly urban one, more of its people will
be living middle class lifestyles that require more electricity in their homes
and workplaces. With a growing number of people seeking to light their homes
and generate power for businesses, farms and manufacturing, the squeeze on
resources will become unsustainable unless renewable resources become part of
the mix according to IEA.
More than 80
percent of the Cameroon’s electricity comes from hydropower, but the government
is also encouraging the exploitation of renewable sources, with solar energy
gaining ground, officials say.
Government
statistics show that the industries remain the largest power consumer in
Cameroon with 2,781 GWh in 2012, particularly the aluminum (48%) and extractive
sectors (18%). Nonetheless, due to regular power outages many factories have
invested in diesel generators while over 85 percent of the population that
cannot afford such generators pay the price of energy poverty. The dearth in
energy supply especially in rural areas in Cameroon has significantly impacted
on health, economic opportunities and access to basic services development experts
say.
According to the country representative of the African
Development Bank in Cameroon Racine Kane, the energy sector in the country is
presently undergoing important institutional changes, including a reform with
unbundling of electricity transmission and completing of a least cost
generation and transmission plan.
“The African Development Bank is accompanying the
Cameroon government in its new drive to improve on energy poverty,” Kane said
while presenting a paper at a joint Cameroon-Belgian private sector meeting in
Yaounde on February 29, 2016.
The Bank, he said, provides an integrated approach
along the energy value chain through policy dialogue, institutional development
and investments. The fund on December 17, 2015 approved EUR 24 million to fund
the production of electricity projects in Cameroon.
Statistics from AfDB presented at the conference shows
that electricity demand in Cameroon far exceeds supply (especially during the
dry season) with the need of around 90 to 100 MW of additional generation per
year. Indeed, the current generation deficit has been assessed at approximately
100MW during the dry season with a projected increase in demand of 8% per year
until 2035.
Training local
energy engineers.
The Cameroon government says its economic vision 2035
cannot be attained without adequate energy supply, thus the compelling need for
additional energy generation capacity that will result in strong development
impact.
To ease development process, the government embraced
decentralization policy over a decade ago to empower local councils
economically. But the local government authorities say hydro-electricity supply
deficiency is impeding councils from realizing their dream.
To breach the gap, the local councils are not only
turning to renewable energy to cope with shortfall but are also training their municipal
engineers to ensure sustainability and fight unemployment in the country.
According to the ministry of water and energy, some 40
local councils have already invested in solar energy as part of a joint effort
with the government to narrow the energy gap in the country, especially in rural
areas and fight against the impacts of climate change. The Limbe and Idenau
local councils are among these.
The country
lacks the necessary human resource to cope with the increase demand. As a
result some higher education institutions in collaboration with local councils
are training students to develop entrepreneurial businesses using solar power
and other renewable energy technologies.
The renewable sector in Cameroon lacks human resources
to plan, design, install, monitor and maintain energy systems – but demand is
growing experts say.
For this reason the ministry of higher education in
collaboration with local councils have introduced training programme - dubbed “Solar
Technicians Made in Cameroon’’ with some universities and higher institutions
running related courses.
Cameroon’s Minister of Water and Energy says these
specialized training opportunities are needed as a sustainable solution to the
economic development deficit in the country, especially in the area of energy
supply.
Development partnerships
Since council authorities gave a nod to renewable
energy, development partners have been working in collaboration to support
poverty alleviation projects.
In 2015 some seven fishing associations in Batoke,
Botaland, Wovia, Bonabile, Area Boys Association Down Beach and Fish Monger’s
Association of Down beach were offered two solar energy fish drying ovens each
by African Resource Group Cameroon, ARG-CAM working in collaboration with the
Limbe city council.
Council authorities say regular power outage did not
only cost the fishing population much in terms of post harvest loss but worst
still, threatened the role of the entire coastal area as a destination for
tourist and investors.
“Even in the CDC camps where the lone
hydro-electricity energy supply company, ENEO, provided electricity, it was
strictly regulated and limited only to the residents of senior staff. The
persistent blackout was a big threat to the role of the entire Limbe coastal
area as a tourist attraction,” says Tonde Lifanje Gabriel, Mayor of Idenau
rural council.
The mayor recalls with a sense of happiness the first
day solar panels arrived Idenau.
“It was like darkness has been crushed by light. I
could not imagine the sun will be our savior,” Mayor Tonde Lifanje said.
“This content has been produced with the support of
the Access to Energy Journalism Fellowship and Discourse Media “
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