Yes we Kenya: African centre for climate innovation
From peddle power renewable energy to $15 million climate centre investment
Kenya hopes to continue a tradition of environmental innovation when it launches a green energy centre at the end of 2011.
The Climate Innovation Centre (CIC) will help companies develop climate-friendly technologies after it is built in December.
The Kenyan government anticipate the facility will generate over 7,000 megawatts of annual electricity. This will be spurred by a high volume of local and regional business activity in renewable power and will make the country more energy-sufficient.
Kenya was the first African country to adopt small scale geothermal energy in 1956 and now produces 2,000 megawatts of geothermal energy per year.
A group of Kenyan university students also hit the news in 2009 after inventing a device which lets cyclists charge their mobile phones while peddling their bicycles. This proved very popular in electricity scarce rural areas.
The CIC project is supported by the World Bank, the Kenyan and Danish governments, and several Kenyan companies.
Over time, the bank hopes to build a global network of 30 similar centres that will create 240,000 direct and indirect jobs, and provide a dramatic improvement in energy to over 28 million people.
The Kenyan centre will cost $15 million over five years and could help create 70 climate technology businesses and more than 5,000 jobs.
Shaukat Abdulrazak, secretary of the National Council for Science and Technology said: “Trade in renewable energy is important not just to economic growth, but to Kenya's goal of being an industrial nation by 2030,”
Kenya is East Africa’s largest economy and has already made significant progress in generating renewable energy.
The country has several smaller wind farms located in different parts of the country and exports equipment for generating wind power to neighbouring Tanzania and Uganda.
The CIC aims to make a strong impact at a local level by helping more individuals move into the green growth sector with grants, jobs and access to clean energy.
Salome Wanjiru, 73, is a Kenyan who increasingly relies on renewable power for his daily activities.
He said: “We have been provided with subsidised solar cookers by a local nongovernmental organisation, and it is something that makes me happy.”
The new initiative could also help the Kenyan government to restore the country’s forests which are being depleted because of a reliance on firewood for energy.
Dominic Walubengo of the Forest Action Network said: “This is something that should have happened many years ago. It will reduce deforestation, and increase forest cover by 10 percent.”
“It will save the country from environmental disaster.”
Image: Franco Pecchio | flickr