3.7 million solar devices later, solar light reaches the homes maps forgot

More than 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa live without electricity, many lighting their homes with kerosene and candles. Ignite Energy Access delivers small solar systems to rural households — 3.7 million devices since 2023 — and Google estimates the partnership enabled more than 160,000 tonnes of carbon-dioxide-equivalent emissions cuts in the first half of 2026 alone. The hard part is finding and reaching homes that do not appear on standard maps. So the two teams combined satellite imagery and Google's Open Buildings dataset to locate them, built routing tools that follow rural paths, and used planning models to place warehouses and mini-hubs so kits travel shorter, cheaper routes. 'The moment reliable energy reaches a community, something shifts — businesses open, children study after dark, farmers can process crops instead of watching them spoil,' said Ignite co-founder and CEO Yariv Cohen. The partners are now modelling small community grids powerful enough for electric cooking. Google did not disclose how it calculated the emissions estimate, so treat that figure as the company's own — the delivered devices, though, are counted hardware in people's homes.

SDG 7 · Affordable and clean energy — Mechanism: tech innovation