By Mohamed Issa

KISIJU PWANI Tanzania (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - In this Indian Ocean port town, one of Tanzania's poorest villages, residents once starved of electricity can now watch television, listen to the radio or eat dinner at a well-lit outdoor food stall, thanks to the arrival of solar power.

Before the solar panels were set up last year, “the village was fast asleep”, admitted Kisiju Pwani's executive secretary, Sadiki Chande Matonela.

Now street lights let food vendors stay open into the evening and security lights at the port have helped curb once rampant theft, he said.

A stable power supply has also enabled Ramadhani Dau, 34, and his wife Zainabu Thabiti, a former health officer, to open a pharmacy, saving villagers a long journey to the nearest town. A shop for building materials and hardware has opened too since the solar energy arrived.

Kisiju Pwani was chosen to receive solar panels from a shortlist of a dozen of the poorest rural villages in Tanzania. The equipment was installed by the University of Dar es Salaam in collaboration with the University of Oslo, backed by $430,000 from the Norwegian development agency, NORAD.

The village contributed 20 percent of the cost by providing land for the mini-grid and security guards to protect it.

The new 12-kilowatt system includes 32 photovoltaic solar panels and a bank of 120 batteries that store the sun’s energy for use at night.

The mini-grid is big enough to benefit in some way about half of the 3,994 villagers, officials say. Its backbone is a power line running through half the village, with cables buried a metre underground for safety.

So far, the system powers 20 street lights and provides energy for 68 homes, 15 businesses, the sea port, the village government offices and two mosques.

LIGHTS, FANS AND PHONES

Now villagers in the coverage area can switch on their lights and fans, charge their mobile phones, listen to radio, watch television and say their prayers in well-lit rooms for just 10,000 to 20,000 Tanzanian shillings ($6-$12) a month, local officials say.

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Villagers were involved in planning and implementing the project, and a village committee is responsible for managing the mini-grid, with a technical team in charge of operations and maintenance.

The project was also purposely sited near the most visible areas of the community “to attract the attention of many passersby” and help popularise the technology, said Bakari Mwinyiwiwa, an energy professor at the University of Dar es Salaam.

Kisiju Pwani lies in the Coast region, considered one of the poorest parts of the Tanzanian mainland in terms of access to services.

Located 50 km (30 miles) from Mkuranga, the closest town connected to the national grid, and 100 km (60 miles) from fast-growing Dar es Salaam, the village relied mainly on kerosene for lighting and wood for cooking before the arrival of the solar panels. It had little prospect of being linked to grid power, Mwinyiwiwa said.

Plans for the Tanzania Electric Supply Company (TANESCO), the country’s sole power supplier, to extend grid services to remote rural areas have foundered, largely because of the high costs and inability of rural residents to pay.

Around 36 percent of Tanzanians have access to electricity. But in rural areas, where 80 percent of people live, only 7 percent can get electricity, government figures show.