Solar for a Clinic and Skills Centre in Swaziland

Our focus in combating poverty in the rural Lubombo region of Eswatini has always focused on finding local resources with little or no local value and connecting them to markets where they do have value.  And training people in the communities to collect and process the resources to add value to bring more of the money into the local economy.

Freshwater crawfish have been a favorite focus of ours.  The crawfish have no local value as emaSwati don't see them as food and are generally wary of anything with large claws (which these have).  But there is a market we have been able to connect to in South Africa. Exporting the crawfish requires processing the live caught crawfish: boiling, rapid cooling, sorting packaging and freezing.  Each of the steps is critical to ensure quality and consistency.

So while the local value chain originally was limited to just catching the crawfish, it has expanded now to include local processing, all of which requires training in proper food handling techniques.

While more and more of the processing and value chain is occurring locally, we are still tied to the expensive and erratic electricity grid here.  Refrigeration, freezers, and even lighting place a huge cost burden on the organization.  We are still seeking to replace the majority of the daily daylight hour electricity usage with solar that is sourced locally and can be serviced locally.

Please help in our quest to alleviate poverty in Eswatini and to be as "green" as possible while doing it.

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