In Cameroon, young solar technicians are lighting the maternity wards

Where the grid does not reach, a maternity ward at night runs on whatever light can be found — and that is the problem a Cameroonian initiative called Solar Bright Future set out to fix. Named a finalist for a UN award this week, the programme has trained 300 young people as solar technicians and entrepreneurs, electrified 712 households and 41 off-grid maternity facilities in health centres, and installed cold storage that keeps vaccines safe — together benefiting more than 100,000 women and children a year. Through its social enterprise, Solar Bright Solutions, it sells and services solar products in off-grid rural communities, and it deliberately opens technical routes to women and people with disabilities, two groups long shut out of the energy trade. Light, refrigeration and a livelihood, arriving in the same box.

SDG 7 · Affordable and clean energy — Mechanism: institutional program