August 1, 2008 | Read Time: 4 minutes
Rema Village, Ethiopia
Emaye Beyene says she has no idea who Bill Clinton is.
But the Ethiopian mother of five does know that a “special guest” came to her town here Thursday to look at how solar power helps her life.
“We don’t need to buy kerosene,” she says about the benefits of the solar panel that protrudes from her mud and straw hut, “and our children can study at night.”
Today, as part of a six-day trek through Africa, Mr. Clinton flew by helicopter to this remote village perched high on a ridge in the country’s northern highlands, about a five-hour drive on bumpy dirt roads from the capital of Addis Ababa. He came to publicize the work of the Solar Energy Foundation, a German charity that has wired the homes of 5,500 people here with 1,100 solar panels.
The solar energy allows Rema’s residents to have small lights in their huts and play radios and other small electrical devices. Before this, like most of the Ethiopia’s rural residents – only 1 percent of which have access to electricity — they used diesel generators and kerosene lamps.
And while lighting up the village with clean energy, the solar power also has social and health benefits, says Harald Schutzeichel, the founder and director of the Solar Energy Foundation.
He says it allows medical clinics to keep vaccines for polio and other diseases refrigerated, fuels water pumps, and creates local jobs for electrical technicians, which the European energy group trains.
“For us it’s a normal light,” Mr. Schutzeichel told the former president, “for them its hope.”
Mr. Clinton seemed to agreeing, saying the project, which is the largest of its kind East Africa and cost roughly $450,000, should be duplicated in other impoverished parts of the continent.
“What we’re trying to do is sell this model,” he says. “This is the power equivalent of the cell phone.”
Following Up on a Pledge
The project’s main donor is Good Energies, an energy investment company. In 2006 its chairman, Marcel Brenninkmeijer, made a public pledge to Mr. Clinton to wire Rema and other villages as part of the Clinton Global Initiative, a yearly meeting of well-heeled donors, celebrities, and charities.
Mr. Brenninkmeijer came with Mr. Clinton to check up on that promise.
Arriving to a crowd of about 300 villagers, Mr. Clinton received a warm welcome, receiving a “gabi,” a traditional Ethiopian shawl, as a gift.
His daughter, Chelsea, and half-brother, Roger, accompanied him and they met students of an adult education class who are now able to meet at night due to the introduction of electricity.
In a classroom, with four new lights dangling from the ceiling, Mr. Clinton peppered Mr. Schutzeichel with questions on wattage, storage capacity of batteries, and production restraints.
“He was testing me,” Mr. Schutzeichel says later, smiling because the former president seemed pleased with the progress of the program.
The former president then met with a local family, who served him coffee and a snack of popcorn and chick peas, in a brown thatched hut.
The mother of the family says she likes to listen to music on her radio thanks to the voltage now in her home.
Other Ethiopians have benefited in a more tangible way.
Berhoilu Aiema, 26, says he earns roughly $180 a month by being a “lightbringer,” one of the 26 electrical technicians trained by the Solar Energy Foundation to install and maintain the solar panels in Rema and elsewhere.
Asked if other villages would like to be like Rema and have electricity, he responds: “They want it!”
Attracting Attention
The Clinton Africa tour next heads to Rwanda, Liberia, and Senegal. Former President Clinton invited friends, like the actor Ted Danson, contributors to his foundation, and members of the news media to get a firsthand look at his charitable work. (The trip got off to a slow start, however, when the news media and other guests were grounded by mishaps with their plane.)
The trip is widely seen as a way to refocus news-media attention on Mr. Clinton’s philanthropy after his wife’s failed bid for the White House and to raise publicity for the next Clinton Global Initiative meeting in September.
While Mr. Clinton’s foundation works worldwide, this impoverished continent, where 325 million people live on less than $1 a day, has been the primary beneficiary of his efforts.
He has primarily reduced the costs of medicines for two of the region’s biggest killers: HIV/AIDS and malaria.
And with $100-million gift from Scottish philanthropist Tom Hunter, the Clinton Foundation has built schools and health clinics, helped coffee growers in Rwanda increase their production by 20 percent, and assisted the country’s government to purchase and distribute 34,000 tons of fertilizer.
Altogether, in Africa and elsewhere, the foundation says the former president’s charitable work has saved the lives of 1.3 million people.
