Dr. Richard Komp
Expert reconnu et auteur de plusieurs livres, le Dr. Richard Komp travaille dans le domaine de l’énergie solaire depuis plus de 50 ans. Il a enseigné dans les petits villages d’Afrique du Sud, du Mali, du Rwanda, du Niger, du Ghana, de la Colombie, de Haïti, du Chili, du Pakistan, du Nicaragua et de l’Inde. Son enseignement auprès des populations locales porte sur les différentes étapes du processus d’exploitation de l’énergie et sur l’éclairage des maisons, des écoles, des églises et des hôpitaux à un très faible coût et sans avoir recours aux installations associées à l’industrialisation massive et à la pose des fils électriques, qui sont particulièrement couteuses dans les zones reculées. L’énergie solaire est écologique, rentable et simple et le Dr. Komp s’est attaché à prouver que l’énergie peut être non seulement accessible à ceux qui ont des moyens financiers mais aussi à tous les autres.  Pour plus d’informations, visitez son site web à https://www.skyheat.org/index.html.

La Ligue Partenariat pour le Développement de l’Afrique (PLAD)
PLAD est une organisation de base des Africains et des amis de l’Afrique dans le monde entier. PLAD milite pour les droits de l’homme et la démocratie en Afrique. Ses membres pensent que la question des droits de l’homme requiert l’amélioration du développement social, la bonne gouvernance, la primauté du droit et la démocratie. L’éducation, la santé et l’agriculture sont les pierres angulaires de leur stratégie pour l’amélioration des droits de l’homme afin que la paix, la démocratie et la croissance inclusive l’emportent. Pour atteindre ces objectifs, il est nécessaire de coordonner les efforts avec la diaspora africaine et les amis de l’Afrique dans le monde, en partenariat avec les organisations, associations ou entités qui travaillent dans ces domaines. Pour plus d’informations, visitez son site web à https://www.pladgroup.org.

Youth for Human Rights International (YHRI)
YHRI est une organisation sans but lucratif fondée en 2001 par le Dr. Mary Shuttleworth, une éducatrice née et élevée pendant la période de l’apartheid en Afrique du Sud, où elle a été témoin direct des effets dévastateurs de la discrimination et de l’absence des droits de l’homme les plus fondamentaux. Le but de YHRI est d’enseigner les droits de l’homme aux jeunes, en particulier la Déclaration Universelle des Droits de l’Homme des Nations Unies, et de les encourager à devenir des avocats de la tolérance et de la paix. YHRI accomplit cela avec le support de matériels d’éducation simples et de haute qualité pour les jeunes, les enseignants et les fonctionnaires et qui ont été traduits en 17 langues. A l’heure actuelle, YHRI dispose de centaines de chapitres et de groupes à travers le monde. Chaque année, YHRI effectue une tournée mondiale, suivie d’un sommet international des droits de l’homme. Pour plus d’informations, visitez le site http://fr.youthforhumanrights.org. 

Les prochaines formations en énergie solaire auront lieu en RDC et au Kenya en 2017.
Contact : Dr. Richard Komp info@skyheat.org 
La Ligue Partenariat pour le Développement de l’Afrique (PLAD) binta@allafr.org 
Youth for Human Rights International, Washington D.C. nationaloffice@humanrights.com 

Since I last left Mali, I have been working in other parts of Africa, including Rwanda. On my latest trip to Rwanda, I arranged to make a sidetrip to Mali to see just how Afriqupower and my orphan friends have been doing in the four years since I was last there helping them start up their solar cottage industry. Most of the orphans I worked with are still with Afriqpower and the company has gotten very big and professional. They are still manufacturing photovoltaic (PV) modules in quantity and have quite a good business designing and installing PV systems, although the bulk of their projects are community systems paid for by outside non-governmental organizations (NGOs). I was met at the airport in Bamako by Afriqpower’s driver and taken to the Italian Council, Loriana’s home. Afriqpower now shares a building with the Italian Consulate on the outskirts of Bamako, right next to where the Chinese are building a new expressway bridge across the Niger River.

Since I was only going to be in Mali less than two weeks, I spent most of my time traveling around to the different villages where Afriqpower has projects, both completed or in the process of being designed and installed. I went on an installation trip with the crews of orphans and the new interns that they are training, and was very impressed by their professionalism. In this one day trip, they installed two different systems: one at a women’s birthing center and another at a mosque in a different nearby village. The two crews, traveling in the two SUVs owned by Afriqpower, went right to work on their separate projects and each member knew exactly what to do. They quickly mounted the 60 watt PV modules on the roofs and wired up the buildings for 12 volt solar electricity. A very neat job – they cut slots in the masonry walls for all the wires and used conduit and junction boxes throughout the work. When they were finished, they plastered up the holes and repainted everything so the wiring is totally hidden in 1st World middle-class standards.

While we were there we also checked out the solar powered well, health clinic solar electric and school lighting systems that had been installed earlier. The well was working perfectly, as was the special vaccine refrigerator in the health clinic, but the school electric system had a bad battery (although the other batteries and the rest of the school’s PV system was functioning perfectly). It turns out that one of the teachers was in the habit of taking that one battery home to run his TV set in the evening and it never got recharged properly the next day. Daniel Demble, the head of Afriqpower, explained that the school was going to have to pay for the new battery. I also went on a couple of trips on my own, with just the Afriqpower driver. On one of these trips I visited a village we had visited in my second trip to Mali back in 2006. At that time, we had traveled with an Italian Rotary Club who promised to build a school and wire up all the community buildings in the village, as well as install a solar pumped water well.

All this work has been accomplished and I checked out the well and talked with the very dynamic woman who runs the birthing center in the village. One of the projects that Loriana and the birthing center women engage in is educating the village women on the dangers of female circumcision, which is still widely practiced in Mali. This work has already made a difference in these villages and I got to witness (from outside the window) one of these women’s classes in progress. I also checked all the water faucets in the village and used my multimeter to verify that all the PV systems in the village were working properly. Everything was working just as it should and Mary Graham of the Practical Small Projects NGO has documented the substantial gain in academic achievement in the village children. While I was there, the orphans asked me to teach them about light emitting diode (LED) lighting. One of the Afriqpower workers is an electronic genius and all I had to do is show him the circuit diagram of the LEDs and a simple electronic circuit to control the power to the diodes. Normally, people use special integrated circuits they buy from the 1st World for this purpose, but I showed him how to measure the voltage drop across each LED and then use Ohm’s Law to calculate the circuit values. The next morning he had a bag of LEDs that he had bought at one of the street markets and two derelict TV chasses to rob for parts.

He taught all the orphans how to build these LED lantern lights for either 6 or 12 volt battery lanterns and then had them all build their own LED lamps. The evening before I flew back to the US, we had a special bon voyage dinner at Loriana’s home. When I walked into the dining room, the entire room was lit by six of these LED lamps running off of a 12 volt motorcycle battery. Even though the entire system was drawing only 4 ½ watts, the soft, warm glow was very pleasant and bright enough for dining at the large table set for 12 people. As a last project, I also worked out all the details of how to build a solar air conditioner to cool the Italian Consulate from the 105+ degree Malian heat. The plans were finished right down to the list of all the parts needed - another future Afriqpower offering.

A group of Liberians living in the Boston area asked me to go to Liberia to give a three part course on solar energy. I have just finished the first part of the course at the Monrovian Vocational Training Center for the 27 students who will be part of a new solar corporation they are now planning. In the first part of the course, the students made small solar cell phone chargers, then graduated to bigger 15 watt PV modules that can be used to light up small squatter huts and rural grass huts. We ourselves used these modules to recharge a 12 volt deep=cycle battery so we would have continuous power to run our tools, since the Center rarely had electricity.

We spent the second week on solar thermal systems, making a solar box cooker big enough to “cook” the large PV modules we made next. We managed to cook both a 65 watt and a custom 75 watt module for a solar water pump we installed, at the same time in the solar oven (a first for cooking two at once).

The students gave me a special African tribal shirt, which I am wearing in the photo. I am now in Ghana teaching a Green Energy course at another technical university, but will be back to teach at both institutions next October and November, on my way back from teaching in Cape Town, South Africa.