Black Looks

Electricity has finally reached the Bishop Kodji island community as part of a Lagos State Government project to install solar power in isolated and rural communities.

Bishop Kodji, a small fishing and canoe carving island in the Atlantic Ocean off Nigeria’s sprawling commercial hub of Lagos, has become the first village to be electrified under the Lagos State government’s pilot solar energy project. Before setting up the project, the village, with a population of 5,000, had not known electricity since its existence. To provide services to the island, which can only be reached by boat, the state government decided to launch the solar project there in May. Nineteen other remote villages would also benefit from the project before the end of the year, according to state government officials.

The fishing community are now using solar powered driers to dry their fish but really anyone can construct a dryer from basic materials found lying around. Of course people can dry food in the traditonal way spread out on a mat or cloth on the ground. But a solar dryer requires less space, is more insect proof and there is a greater concentration of heat so the food drys quicker. I have successfully used a solar powered dryer to dry fruit and chili peppers for three years. It is an amazingly simple piece of technology that requires no solar panels and can be made with the minimal of costs. Mine was is made of wood, metal and glass collected from the rubbish dump plus a small piece of mosquito proofing. Here my friend Matthias is building our dryer – I did assist in the gathering process and general helper but he thought of the design and put it together.

As you can see even in rural Spain I never stroll too far away from the ubiquitous shiny red, blue or black and white plastic bag”.

The final product

Back to Nigeria. It goes without saying that Nigeria’s climate is perfect for solar power but the panels are expensive. However, for rural communities items like the solar dryer and irrigation pumps do not need panels. For more on solar power in Africa see AfroMusing’s Blog.