This solar-powered lamp is called MwangaBora, Swahili for “good light”, created by Kenyan engineer Evans Wadongo. The lamps are designed to be manufactured by members of rural communities in Kenya to support the development of small business and encourage education amongst these communities.

Wadongo is a Kenyan engineer and Executive Director and Chairman of SDFA-Kenya. He developed the idea for this lamp, made of locally sourced scrap metal and off-the-shelf electronic parts and photovoltaic cells, as a response to his experience growing up in a village near Nairobi, with no electricity infrastructure . This led to his studying by the dim light of a kerosene lamp. The resulting problems included the expense of the kerosene, the dim light, having to share one light source with his family, and the permanent damage caused to his health from being so close to the burning kerosene. He nevertheless persevered with his education, graduating from Jomo Kenyatta University with a BSc in Electronic and Computer Engineering. It was during his studies that he encountered LED Christmas lights; Wadongo endeavoured to combine this cheap, bright and highly efficient lighting with solar power technology and take it to the villages of Kenya, as he had witnessed the disparity in education between those who had access to electricity through infrastructure and affordability, and those who did not.

The need for better sources of light has led to a growing number of designs seeking to provide a good source of light without the need for continuous access to an electricity supply. Solar-power is the most frequently used sources of power used. The MwangaBora is of particular interest for several reasons: it is an indigenous solution, emanating directly from Wadongo’s experience and background. It is designed to be manufactured in Kenya by rural workers, even though it would be possible to mass produce elsewhere in the world at cheaper cost. In practice, Wadongo is instigating social development through the supply chain of the lamps.

The outlay for a MwangaBora is about $23 as opposed to a $6 kerosene lamp, so Wadongo raises funds through charitable donations and gives initial batches of lamps to women’s community groups. His strategy is that in using these lamps, the groups make savings by not spending money on kerosene (up to 75 cents a day, 60% of rural Kenyan workers’ average daily earnings) , which is then invested in small businesses, such as handicrafts by the women of the village, or raising livestock. Seeing their success, other villagers request lamps which this time they pay for from this additional income. This income is invested in the local young people who produce the lamps from local, recycled scrap metal. Their success encourages others and additional lamps are bought, further developing the economy in the area. This is demonstrated by the fact that Sustainable Development for All has distributed more than 32,000 lamps to date, beginning with 500 in the year 2004-2005 to 5000 in the year 2010-2011.

Over 1.4 billion people, a fifth of the world’s population, have no access to electricity . This lack of infrastructure inhibits economic development, particularly in the global south–Southern Asia and Africa—where most of these people reside. This lamp and the culture that Wadongo has instigated are agents of social change, providing opportunity for communities, encouraging development in local populations and increasing prospects for women and young people in the communities as well. In 2011 Wadongo received the inaugural Mikhail Gorbachev award for “The Man Who Changed the World”, alongside Tim Berners Lee, and in August 2013 was named on a list by MIT Technology Review of the Top 35 Innovators Under 35.