Arise and Shine Bakery, Kenya

I was a small kid when I built my first DIY project. Back then, our winters still had real snow.
Every year.

Back then, I already knew how to ski, but we didn’t own skis.
So I decided to make them myself. I was like 8 years old.

Skis are normally made out of "composite materials", a fancy way of saying: impossible to recycle and impossible to build yourself. But I had seen, in a rustic restaurant, hanging on a wall, a pair of skis, made in all wood…

I was a lucky kid. I grew up on an organic farm, with a big workshop, all sorts of tools and parents who encouraged making things. I loved working with wood. It’s intuitive, beautiful, and really a friendly substance.
I think that was the start of my love for working with wood.

And it’s fast: I was done with my skis the next day, and got to test them in the same snow that inspired the action! Awesome.

I think building in wood could also be a good idea for Lytefire. Making it easier to build, simpler to start.

Last year I visited the university of Sofia Antipolis in the south of France. It was a program from Ecole des Mines. I was called there to be a solar instructor, and support the students, some of whom had 0 building experience... I instructed them to build simple mirror holders with wood. The students succeeded right away and we needed nothing but hand-tools. Bamboo has also been tried by Lytefire’s team members a while ago.

And even before this, in 2020, I instructed a group of students at the Bern University of Applied Sciences and their wood‑engineering department. 24 students explored ways to build Lytefire structures in wood. This was the height of COVID, now six years ago already! Everything was happening online, and there was no time to build. I was left with at least 6 different approaches to build Lytefire with wood… On top of my own ideas of how it could be done…

The lockdown started. At that time, I lived in Heuberge, a rustic Swiss mountain hotel. Surrounded by melting snow, and lots of sun. I proposed to the hotel to build a Lytefire oven… A way to attract more clients in the summer, to offer pizza, baked with the sun… With the global warming welcoming structure need new ideas.

I started building… And this time in wood.

And that brings me to the point:
We’re considering adding a wood‑based construction option to the Lytefire guides. It could make building easier, reduce the need for metal works, and open the door for more people to start.

If you have thoughts about wood‑building or feedback on our DIY guide, let’s talk about it! I think wood could open the way for more people to build their own solar access.

Time to check on our journey!

Step one was to test and try our ideas about a direct solar economy, meaning how can the use of direct sunshine impact the economy positively. It’s a multi-factorial impact:

• Environment preservation (no more wood burning)
• Health protection (no more breathing in of lethal dark particles)
• Women empowerment (no more hours gathering wood and watching the fire)
• Wealth creation (a powerful and steady energy source can power business)

At that point we praise solar cooking and we wanted to go a bit beyond that, to bring the spirit into commercial activities such as baking for example. So at first, we worked in Kenya in partnership with Weconomy, World Vision Finland and World Vision Kenya. This was in 2016 and we have documented the very first and successful production of solar bread and solar peanut butter.

In 2017-2018, a strategic partnership with Autodesk and Wärtislä with World Vision and Global Resources Alliance allowed us to train and empower 54 entrepreneurs in 9 projects in Kenya and Tanzania. We observed, we documented what works, what doesn’t.

This lead to the opening of a very nice solar bakery led by women in Tanzania.

These projects created with our humanitarian partners and clients have set the basis of a direct solar economy where artisans and entrepreneurs adapted their work to the availability of the solar energy source. And that’s not a small thing to do as you can imagine.

In France, the successful solar bakery Neoloco started in 2020, has attracted lots of attention and is invited to share at many universities about their specific solar work organization. This great example is inspiring to many.

Fast forward to 2025, the Solar Fire Bakery created in 2022 in Kisumu, Kenya, was awarded the Prix Afrique Excellence. It is Africa’s first solar bakery, and it’s powered by a Lytefire.

"The second prize awarded to the solar bakery recognizes a project requiring very little capital, using updated techniques for baking bread through concentrated solar power. It meets the requirements of sustainability and accessibility, is highly replicable across all regions, and is a reliable way to stabilize and retain local populations, as the bakery serves as a hub of social activity."

That same year, another strategic partnership with the Jansen PrimeSteps Foundation, allowed us to focus more on incubation while supporting the start of several solar bakeries.

These are the seeds of an emerging direct solar economy that is now starting everywhere, with users from Kenya to France, from Uganda to Senegal.

Another solar baking oven installed by STEM Synergy partner and licensee in Ethiopia! Congratulations.

Empowering Communities Through Solar Technology is one of the motivations of STEM Synergy. In collaboration with a dedicated group from Wolaita now living in the U.S., their team has installed its 4th solar-powered bakery in Bitena Town, Dugna Fango Woreda.

These clean energy bakeries are transforming lives, lowering costs, boosting productivity, and creating sustainable jobs for women and youth.

For more than a decade Lytefire has tackled the energy, climate and poverty crisis by spreading sustainable solar tech and training. We’ve been able to create jobs where resources are few, reduce emissions while growing the local economy, and for us this has also brought new hope that yes, people can be empowered, we can do things differently, we can make change possible. At the same time, as an impact company we are always critical and looking to improve - and this is why we are excited to shift from the training approach to the incubation approach. What’s our thinking behind that?

You get what you measure

“The project has trained 100 people in solar…” – It’s great when we read this, but what do we actually know about how many of the trainees actually make use of their training? For us at Lytefire it means asking ourselves how many solar entrepreneurs who trained in running their own sustainable bakery actually run one.

When looking deeper into this, it quickly becomes clear that the number of people trained is not a good indicator of the actual impact.

For us this means two things:

1. We shouldn’t design projects to train the maximum number of people, and
2. We should design projects to support people in their whole impact journey.

We have been running solar training activities with major NGOs, UN organizations and a myriad of locally rooted organizations across Africa and beyond. We know that the success of a solar bakery depends immensely on the local ingenuity and motivation of the entrepreneurs, and that when done right, Lytefire can yield carbon reductions, cost savings and a competitive advantage in the market place by reducing the price of bread or giving entrepreneurs a better margin.

But often the challenges are not related to the product and technology, but rather challenges in the day-to-day operation, the administration, with permits, the workforce, political instability, etc.

Let’s incubate

With the project we are able to launch several new solar bakeries, but we are also able to provide incubation support to already trained groups. In Kenya, we work with Joan Arwa, entrepreneur owner of the Solar Fire Bakery in Kisumu and trainer. She was recently awarded with the Africa Excellence Prize from France.

One such group is the Kormei Bakery in Sego, Kenya. The group was initially trained and equipped on behalf of World Vision. The training showed immediate uptake and the bakery has been running ever since at a high output. As a result, Sego has become a very interesting case study candidate for us. Through incubation we can follow their progress more hands-on, and also help the bakery not get bogged down with administrative, staff or other issues that may arise as the bakery grows and faces new challenges.

As we are in the implementation of this new incubator approach we cannot share yet about the successes and challenges of the entrepreneurs and our program yet – but we can be sure that being closer to our end users and having the resources to support them with incubation is a good thing!

We also welcome other organizations, as well as clients and financiers in the impact industry to shift their project implementation goals to build long-term projects that take responsibility to create impact over time. We also think that shifting from metrics like people trained to jobs created or income generated is an important perspective change.

So, we will soon share more about the outcome of this incubation approach.

Are you interested in solar incubation? Schedule a meeting with us.

All units have safely arrived in Senegal for this project led by Association Adscal, the training with our friend Michel was short but great, Isma and Abou provided fantastic guidance and now the first solar and charcoal tests are starting.

The bakers are working very well with their solar ovens to bake nice baguettes!

Nice baguettes, delicious cookies. The mamma’s are happy and so are we.

La boulangerie solaire Solar Fire Bakery au Kenya s’est vue attribuer le deuxième Prix Afrique Excellence.

Joan Ogwang Arwa et son équipe sont primés ainsi que nous à Lytefire qui l’avons beaucoup soutenue depuis la création il y a 5 ans (déjà !), notamment Eva Wissenz, Urs Riggenbach et Muriel Fuhrer.

Le but de ce prix porté par une association créée en France par Mr Christian Teyssonnière de Gramont, est de mettre en avant des talents et des solutions réellement adaptés au contexte des pays d’Afrique. Il s’agit d’identifier des innovations, des pratiques et des modèles pouvant être mis à l’échelle et qui renforcent l’économie locale de manière soutenable pour les gens et leur environnement. Chacun des trois gagnants reçoit une dotation.

Avec Joan comme boulangère en chef, Cheryl et son équipe d’assistants boulangers et de vendeurs, Joan a récemment obtenu la certification KEBS du Bureau Kenyan de régulation, qui lui donne accès à davantage de marchés, comme les écoles, les hôpitaux, etc.

Joan a récemment ouvert une boutique et l’a repeinte à neuf il y a peu. Grâce au soutien financier du Prix Afrique Excellence, elle pourra investir dans une meilleure solution de transport.

Nous espérons voir de plus en plus de femmes africaines comme Joan gagner leur autonomie avec des projets d’artisanat solaire nourricier.

68 superbes projets ont été proposés cette année et on espère qu’il y en aura encore beaucoup l’année prochaine.

Nous sommes vraiment très heureux de cette reconnaissance.

Le site du Prix Afrique Excellence.