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Solar minigrid brings light and hope to a Goma neighborhood, offering blueprint for rest of Congo
A solar minigrid in a Goma neighborhood where almost everyone lacked access to electricity just five years ago is offering a flicker of hope despite widespread poverty and the city’s violent takeover by Congolese rebels early this year.
That was in 2020, three years after Shaw, a former teacher, and Congolese partner Archip Lobo Ngumba built the DRC’s first commercial solar minigrid in the small town of Beni in Congo’s North Kivu province. With investor backing, Nuru built the 1.3-megawatt minigrid — interconnected last year with a hydropower grid in Virunga National Park, north of Goma, to bolster resilience — that together power phone and internet service and a private company that pumps, treats and distributes water. The Goma experience highlights the advantages of decentralized or standalone power grids, making it a logical blueprint for population centers in the rest of the country, where the electrification rate is roughly 20%, according to the company.
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