#IDonDeyShine: Lighting Africa is Giving Nigerians A Reason To Embrace Solar

The average Nigerian knows what it means to be deprived of adequate power supply. How many times do we get home to resort to noisy, expensive and health-hazardous alternatives to grid electricity? That is why Lighting Africa’s recent digital campaign, #IDonDeyShine, is tickling the fancy of ordinary Nigerians who have had to spend their hard-earned resources on a regular basis in fuelling various power and light generating alternatives.

Ordinarily, the rigour of working hard in Nigeria’s tropical hot climate is tough enough on the body; add that to the nerve-racking ordeal of navigating through stubborn traffic to get home. That should have been enough trouble for one day; but not at all. We get home and are welcomed by the cold embrace of darkness, either because the discos ceased power or some folks just refused to pay their electricity bills and everyone has to suffer for it. Certainly, many Nigerians are familiar with this frustrating scenario, a challenge which Lighting Africa has been working hard to tackle through the provision of affordable quality-verified solar-powered home systems.

Before now, Jerry’s nights followed the same pattern. While returning home, he’ll stop over at Abu’s kiosk to buy some candlesticks and mosquito coil. Afterward, he’ll still have to wade through a poorly lit room, despite lighting several fast-burning candles, to fix himself up for the night. But that’s usually the beginning of his daily ordeal. The real fight starts when it’s time to get his well deserved night sleep. On the one hand, he’ll have to deal with hazardous fumes from the candles and coil. On the other hand, it’s a real battle with the heat and the rampaging mosquitoes. Needless to say that he wakes up heavy-headed every morning because he didn’t enjoy a good night’s sleep.

However, coming in contact with a Lighting Africa-verified Solar Home System (SHS), which comes with a solar-powered TV set, standing fan, solar bulbs and a phone charging port, he wasted no time in making a purchase online. Now, Jerry and many others like him walk confidently to their homes knowing that it will be brightened up and they can enjoy their night and sleep in comfort. Very importantly, they now have no qualms with charging up their phone. That’s the aim of Lighting Africa’s #IDonDeyShine campaign.

 Nigeria, with an estimated population of over 200 million people, has a power generation capacity hovering around 5,000 – 7,000MW, meaning that a large chunk of the population (about 101 million people) lack access to grid electricity. Even among those who have access to the grid, 40% are under-electrified and can hardly boast of 4 hours of constant power supply per day. For the lower wrung of society, hazardous light sources like atupa and candles become the easy alternative. For others, it’s been a wasteful resort to a daily expense on power generating sets.

The good news, though, is that Lighting Africa continues to create more awareness on better, cleaner, and safer off-grid lighting and energy products available for millions of people living in rural and peri-urban areas with little or no access to the grid.

To achieve its goal of increasing access to clean, modern and affordable lighting products, Lighting Africa-Nigeria is partnering with a number of manufacturers, including Greenlight Planet, VillageBoom, Smarter Grid, d.light solar, ovSolar and Voltze, whose solar products meet the Lighting Global Quality Standards and still undergo routine market check testing, and a large network of distributors and retailers around the country. Lighting Africa-Nigeria has gone further to tackle one of the barriers to the adoption of clean energy sources by making quality-verified solar home systems readily available at everyone’s fingertips with just a few clicks. Click here to browse products and make a purchase.

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