A solar future for Kenya's youth?

Frederick Ouko left western Kenya when he was 20, in search of a college education. Unemployed, he moved to the capital city of Nairobi and settled in Kibera, the second largest slum in Africa. Basic services such as electricity, water, and sanitation are scarce there. As much as 45 percent of the population lacks a job and 80 percent of residents aged 15 to 35 are unemployed, according to the United Nations Development Programme.

Ouko received a diploma in business communication technology, a rare accomplishment. But instead of leaving the slums, he founded the Kibera Youth Community Programme to provide alternatives to drug abuse and crime. To fund some of the projects, Ouko turned to solar power.

Ouko employs 16 local youths to manufacture handheld solar devices, which they sell throughout Nairobi and in the countryside. The devices, purchased through the UK group BioDesign and sold for the equivalent of US$24 on average, are used mainly to power mobile phones or radios. "Some [of the employees] are out of school, still trying to figure out what to do," Ouko said. "Now they have an option for income, and they can ... benefit from the skills of their training."

According to a 2007 World Bank report, Kenya has annual solar energy resources equivalent to the discovery of roughly 70 million tons of oil. The country already sells about 30,000 solar photovoltaic (PV) systems each year. So far, solar PV ownership is till dominated by the rural middle class. Most of the estimated 4.2 percent of rural Kenyans who own a solar systems have annual household incomes well above $2,000 per year, according to a 2007 study in the journal World Development.

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Solar opportunities for Kenya's rural and urban poor are still too few to see widespread economic improvement, said Maurice Odera, the Kenya representative for the United Nations Environment programme's TUNZA youth initiative. For those who earn less than $1 a day, he said significantly ramping up community-wide solar opportunities like Ouko's would require sustained government subsidies.

--Ben Block and Ambika Chawla