Over 40 CEDP Projects Approved!

In truth I am not sure where the time has gone since we last posted! But that is testament to the huge amount of work that the CEDP have been doing to make sure that activities were completed by the end of March 2014.

Each Development Officer has been working hard with the 4 community based organisations (CBO) in their respective regions (see our newsletters here for updates on the DOs activities). Having identified the main needs in each community, supported the community to find an appropriate renewable energy solution to address this need and through providing appropriate training and capacity building it is hoped that all communities are now well prepared to operate and manage the systems themselves. As such, at the end of March, each CBO was ready to submit an application for funding to build the renewable energy projects that will address the need in their communities.

We are delighted to announce that each of the 12 CBOs has successfully submitted applications for funding with 43 projects being approved for funding by the 31st March. The different types of and numbers of installations are outlined below:

	North	Central	South	Total
Solar Powered Water Pumping	1	0	1	2
PV for CBO office	2	0	0	2
PV for Primary School and staff houses	12	4	4	20
PV for CDSS	3	0	1	4
PV Teacher Development Training Centre	1	0	0	1
Cook stoves	2	2	0	4
Solar lanterns	1	4	4	9
PV for  Health Centre, fridge for medical supplies and staff houses	0	0	1	1
Total projects installed	22	10	11	43

Each DO is now working with each of the CBOs to make sure that projects are installed, watch this space for installation news!

Third Issue of Newsletter Released!

The CEDP newsletter covering programme activities in December 2013 and January 2014 has now been released! To access the newsletter visit the CEDP website by clicking here

Sarah Jones visits Martin Ketembo to Work on Toolkit

At the end of January 2014, Sarah Jones visited Malawi for a 2 week period to work closely with Martin Ketembo of Mulanje Renewable Energy Agency (MuREA) on the Community Energy Toolkit for Malawi.

The MuREA office with the Mulanje Massif in the background

During this visit Sarah and Martin received all of the contributions for the toolkit, were able to edit the contributions into a first draft of the toolkit and circulate the draft to stakeholders and partners for comment.

The current format of the toolkit is as follows:

The Primary Toolkit
- An A4 booklet which will be a "one stop shop" for development workers and community members with higher literacy levels

The Secondary Toolkit
- An A5 booklet with key information on how to maintain, repair and troubleshoot issues for each of the technologies contained in the primary toolkit.
- A series of A4 illustrations depicting key messages from the primary toolkit. These can be used as a visual aid by development workers who are working with communities with lower literacy levels.

Of her recent trip to Malawi Sarah said:

 "I was based in the MuREA office in Mulanje which is in a truly spectacular part of Malawi. Being able to work in the same office as Martin has made coordinating this important stage of the toolkit a lot simpler. I've been made to feel so welcome by all of the staff in the MuREA office and I look forward to being able to come back soon, next time I will make sure I leave enough time to explore Mulanje Mountain on my days off!"

As soon as the toolkit is available we will upload a copy to the CEDP website - www.communityenergymalawi.org Watch this space!

CEDP Hits the Headlines!

Last week, an article on the work of the CEDP and it's importance in the cook stove projects in helping to fight deforestation in Malawi was published in The National Times - one of the main newspapers in Malawi.

Blessings Mbendera carrying out cook stove awareness training, Lilongwe District

Central Region Development Officer, Blessings Mbendera, gave a great overview of the programme as well as the programme partners. You can view the article from this news piece on the CES website.

CEDP website live!

The CEDP now has a website! To access the website visit www.communityenergymalawi.org or follow this link here

 

 

Positive impact already seen at Machinga!

Mavuto, the Development Officer for the Southern Region recently gave an update on the project progress for Umodzi CBO, Machinga District.

Umodzi CBO are planning to install solar PV panels in their community schools and word has spread about this upcoming development to the surrounding communities. So much so that the school register has increased from approximately 900 pupils to over 1700 in anticipation of the solar PV installation!! When asked about why this was, Mavuto said that people in the surrounding community were keen to go to a school which had electricity as they could study in the evenings.

One of the school buildings in Machinga District where Solar PV will be installed under the CEDP.

It's really exciting to hear this type of news from the field. The project is not yet installed and already we can see the potential positive impacts that the CEDP projects may have. Stay tuned for more news from the field!

New Blog from University of Strathclyde

Over the last two weeks 3 members of staff from the University of Strathclyde (the University of Strathclyde are the MREAP project coordinators) travelled to Malawi to catch up with the MREAP partners on project progress and outline what the on going strategy will be for MREAP.

 

(l-r) Peter, Damien and Magnus from University of Strathclyde

 



During their trip, Damien, Peter and Magnus put together a fantastic blog which outlines some of the work going on in the CEDP as well as projects being carried out by other strands of the MREAP programme. (For a refresher on MREAP and how the CEDP sits within MREAP you can visit this website.).

You can access the University of Strathclyde Energy for Development Blog here.

Building a biogas digester in Mchinji District. This project is being developed by Mzuni University in Mzuzu, one of the MREAP Strategic Partners.