Installation of solar energy in hospitals by CENCUDER brings hope to the population.
By Ngalame Elias
CENCUDER’s development endeavour is changing lives of many in rural communities in Cameroon and fighting climate change. Their project is about tapping energy from the sun and supplying to hospitals in “forgotten” places.
The Centre For Community Development and Environmental Restoration, CENCUDER has been able to power 3 health clinics in the South West Region with reliable renewable energy.
CENCUDER CEO Mr Kwangene says
“we are located in the tropics where there is abundant sunshine and can exploit this advantage to improved on the lighting situation in our hospitals and clinics. With this in mind and considering the unreliable nature of our energy supply company ENEO,CENCUDER has recently installed solar energy in 3 health centres to enable them function 24hrs/ 24hrs.”
The solar energy he says will also improve on the security of personnel and patients ,improve paediatric emergency, blood transfusion and other services the clinics couldn’t handle because the epileptic energy supply by Eneo.
Training and capacity building workshop
Curing climate change
CENCUDER success story is a real booster to the fight against climate change that has taken its toll on the livelihoods of people especially in Africa where droughts, erratic rainfall, floods have become the new normal.
Scientists agree that renewable energy is one of the major ways of mitigating the adverse impacts of climate change because it is clean and does not emit dangerous greenhouse gases into atmosphere.
Renewable energy is energy generated from natural resources such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides and geothermal heat which are naturally replenished.
“A switch to renewable energy is what we need now. Times have changed,” says Mr Kwangene Princely.
CENCUDER has decided to move with the times by making renewable energy available to hospitals for better health service delivery to the population.
“Renewable energy is by action not talking. Africa has sunlight, wind, tides, and rains in abundance. Why don’t we just abandon our old ways of supplying energy and act now to save the world from the dangerous consequences of climate change?” he says adding that energy deficiency is a major setback to development in Cameroon in particular and Africa in general.
And he’s right.
Most of Cameroon lives in the dark. Cameroon suffers from outages: about 10 electrical outages per month, which last an average of two hours each.
Despite the impressive hydroelectric capabilities of the country, only approximately 20% of the population have access to the national grid, with 80 percent of the supply concentrated in urban areas and just 17 percent in rural areas according to the Ministry of Water Resources and Energy. Apart from hydro power, Cameroon is well endowed with sunshine, and various sources of biomass and natural gas, yet little effort has been put into the development of these energy sources.
Renewable energy currently contributes about 1% towards Cameroon’s energy mix according to 2018 government figures.
CENCUDER technical team pose with hospital staff
CENCUDER CEO Mr Kwangene Princely with two hospital staff