Addressing environmental issues
Improving energy access in Burkina Faso
In rural homes across Africa with no connection to the electricity grid, preparing meals and other work at home are laborious tasks for women. They spend up to six hours a day collecting firewood, fetching water, husking and pounding grain, with no time left for outside employment. Girls often perform poorly in school due to inconsistent attendance, and are forced to drop out to help their mothers.
In Burkina Faso and other countries in West Africa, the Multi-Functional Platform is empowering women and their communities, bringing new economic opportunities. Japan, in cooperation with UNDP and other partners is assisting the initiative, which will be discussed at the Fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD IV) in Yokohama on 28 to 30 May 2008.
The platform is powered by a diesel engine mounted on a chassis, to which a variety of processing equipment can be attached, including cereal mill, husker, battery charger, and joinery and carpentry equipment.
With the platform, tasks such as milling and husking sorghum, millet, maize and other grains become profitable economic activities. The platform also generates electricity for lighting, refrigeration and to pump water, which helps provide clean water to communities along with improved health care and education services.
Women have more hours in the day to develop profitable activities to boost their productivity, enabling them to sell better quality products and increase their income using low-cost, effective technology.
In Burkina Faso, a survey found that 19 platforms helped local communities earn more than $500,000 in one year. Families are escaping poverty, with more money for food, clothing, and children’s education.
The platform is bringing big benefits for girls, who can devote less time to work at home and increase their school attendance and improve their grades and academic achievement.
As Burkina Faso sets it sights on achieving the Millennium Development Goals by 2015, the platform is making an important contribution. As a result, plans are underway to expand the pilot project to national scale and install 400 platforms in five regions.
Lessons learned from this initiative can serve as the basis to expand the approach across Sub Saharan Africa, where an estimated 100 million people in rural areas could benefit.