A Grassroots Initiative to Disseminate Solar Energy Technologies in Ethiopia: Implications to Climate Change Education

Abstract

As a tropical country, Ethiopia has an enormous potential to develop and use environment-friendly sources of energy like solar power. Despite such huge potential to tap electricity form the sun (not to mention the 45,000 MW potential from water), access to electricity is only about 35%. Solar energy technologies, if used widely, could alleviate the problem of rural electrification. This, however, demands a sustained effort to raise awareness about the technologies and develop skills required to make use of them. To this end, a school-based pilot project was initiated in 2004 by a Faith-based Organization in Ethiopia. The principal aim of the project was to bring about a positive change on the environment by using primary schools as centers of such change. The major activities meant to achieve the aim of the pilot project included, among others, assessing the place of energy and environment in the existing curricula; and dissemination of solar energy know-how and technologies. This paper reports the findings of a comprehensive study conducted to examine the extent to which the aforementioned objectives have been achieved. The findings indicate that the existing textbooks offer adequate opportunity to enable schools to address issues related to energy and environment. A closer look at content of the textbooks and the way the issues have been presented reveals, however, that most of the topics related to energy and environmental management have been presented neither comprehensively nor systematically. On the other hand, the solar energy technologies installed in the school compounds attracted the attention of individuals and community based organizations. More importantly, the solar home systems are found to have been operating (in nine of the eleven schools) without a problem, years after the official end of the project. Based on this and other evidences on the ground, the paper concludes that schools in Ethiopia have a potential not only to serve as centers of dissemination of knowledge about alternative energy technologies but also as centers where skills are developed to seek sustainable solutions to key environmental problems like climate change.