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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.

We are happy and honored to start a new project in East Africa with the trust and support of Jansen PrimeSteps Foundation. The foundation is focused on poverty alleviation through entrepreneurship, and with this new project PrimeSteps is going to help us elevate our work and increase our impact in Kenya, and if possible in Uganda as well.

A few years ago, the Foundation already supported the empowerment of women’s groups in Burkina Faso. In this beautiful but vulnerable country, women and youth, in particular, lack livelihood opportunities and access to energy. The project provided several Lytefire solar ovens, and the users received appropriate training. With this new cooperation, the goal is to go further and incubate six small-scale solar businesses in Kenya to be profitable job creators and suppliers of affordable baked goods in their communities.

We will provide our usual training that covers the technical aspects of the technology (use, maintenance, safety) and the basis of entrepreneurship training will cover stock management, accounting, customer acquisition, among the many other topics, to enable each group to succeed as independent entrepreneurs. For the best success of the entrepreneurs, the project will also provide incubation support beyond the initial training, to troubleshoot any entrepreneurial challenges during the startup phase. We believe this incubator approach is more and more the way Lytefire will structure our impact-oriented work.

As an impact company, at Lytefire we are focused on delivering sustainable equipment to create new income opportunities and empower populations in vulnerable countries. Our team offers innovative training programs that help start local businesses or promote the transfer of technological know-how to vocational schools. Every Lytefire installed can protect 651 m² of forest each year from being cut down for fuel. Learn more about our impact here and about our educational work here.

The UNDP (or United Nations Development Program) is one of the major stakeholders when it comes to implementing the energy transition and livelihoods improvement for vulnerable populations.

“UNDP works in about 170 countries and territories, helping to eradicate poverty, reduce inequalities and exclusion, and build resilience so countries can sustain progress. As the UN’s development agency, UNDP plays a critical role in helping countries achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.”

This year, we won a bid and we can finally start to work with his important agency. The beneficiaries of the projects in Angola are all women, and two of three project managers are women.

In Lunda-Norte, it is refugee settlement under UNHCR’s supervision. There is a big facility that is both used by refugees and also host community from that region. Trainings are provided there with sewing machines, computer room, kitchens, and so the idea is that the users can cook and bake with the solar energy so they have less need for electricity. The main user is a group of 60 women that will work in the kitchen, majority of which are refugees from different places. Almost 400 farmers are also involved on the project. People growing the food, experimenting with different crops, experimenting with food sovereignty, and creating income generation with the productive use of clean energy. Altogether, they are creating strategies to enhance local production and reinforce food security by incorporating maize and cassava flour to the recipes.

In Benguela, UNDP works with a local NGO, supporting with fisheries, use of less seeds, supporting small scale and more collective farmers as well in their production. This program is meant to support the switch from own sufficiency to being able to sell and make income. There is also a school there with almost 2000 children who are going to discover the solar efficiency with Lytefire! In the school UNDP is installing a small prefabricated building, which will be a library, a playroom and computer room with solar panels. This school used to have a bakery but the ovens broke down, then they used generators, and then the bakery stopped. So, the idea here is to restart the production with their Lytefire solar oven.

In Uige, UNDP works with World Vision. The location is very remote, people are very poor, everything is missing, including clean water and this where Lytefire is needed most.

As usual, we will share about the achievements in challenges in future posts as we receive them.

Our cooperation with World Vision has been very important to us because it is while working with them that our model could be refined towards African entrepreneurs in 2016 (here) and in 2017 (here).

We met Mrs Joan Arwa back then and she has always been a fantastic colleague. Since 3 years now she is successfully running her solar bakery in Kisumu, Kenya (here). Not far from there, in Sego, she recently trained a great group supported by World Vision for the Noswet program.

The group members have known each other for years and are very appreciated in the community. As per their report: “The group has over 30 members and they chose 5 to be working in the bakery at all times. They open early morning and close late evening for 6 days of the week, each day they bake 25kgs of bread, scones and cakes."

“This community based group serves various clients ranging from bakery walk-in customers, to nearby retail shops, and schools who give orders in bulk.

“Being a long rainy season they have currently been substituting sunlight energy with charcoal backup as they continue serving clients. When there is sun, of course they make solar baking. They say they use both sources of energy to power the bakery. The group has been working on buying more baking tins to produce more.”

World Vision’s local staff highlights that the group makes profit everyday with the solar barking activity and invests in their development. The data collection will allow to quantify everything much better.

A nice inauguration day has been organized to support the new Sego solar bakery!

See also our newsletter presenting the project (here).

SOLAR BAKING NEWS FROM UGANDA

Click here if you wish to translate this newsletter.

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There are 2 types of journeys that people can take with a Lytefire solar oven.

1. Entrepreneurial
2. Community Based Organization (CBO)

After Joan Arwa last time sharing about her Solar Fire Bakery in Kenya, today it’s another team presenting what they do with their Lytefire in East Africa.

The project in Nebbi, Uganda, started in 2021 with the support of Plan International Finland - Plan International Suomi and Plan International Uganda.

Back then, a group of young adults received a Lytefire solar oven old generation (without the charcoal drawer) and a long training to launch a professional solar baking activity adapted to their environment. Since then, they never stopped and they now generated some profit.

CBO’s organization is sometimes great to start and get a group to make the best use of their solar oven. At Lytefire, we are all about the productive use of solar energy and now this team would like to start their entrepreneurial adventure.

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Fresh news from the team running the Nebbi Smart Up Solar Bakery in Uganda:

Benedict Bithola – Oyella Janety – Prudence Vasta & Benedict

How is Nebbi Smart Up bakery doing since its creation in 2022?

We have been able to sustain our livelihood through baking and we created a platform for many youths within the region who are employed in selling our baked products like cookies, cakes, buns, donuts, bread, mandazi and others to be engaged instead of turning into criminal activities, robbery, drug abuse among others.

Our bakery has emerged as one of the best bakeries in producing quality products in the region and offering quality training services in baking skills.

The bakery has also become a centre of training for youths who have passion for baking and this has enabled them to gain more skills in baking and marketing.

There is steady growth and profit has been realised due to purchase of new equipment like cake stands, baking tins, buckets, and the ongoing construction of a new kitchen.

We are able to repair broken mirrors, buying of cake mixture with a larger capacity to accommodate bigger orders.

Our current goal is to open up our own outlet in town away from the bakery so as to limit congestion when buyers come and we hope to achieve this after completing the construction of the kitchen.

Construction of the new kitchen next to the solar oven

Joining the Lytefire project was a special moment and the best decision we have ever made because in most countries in Africa, especially in Uganda in which our bakery is located, we are educated to look for jobs as job seekers not as job creators but this bakery group with the Lytefire solar oven and training has given us an opportunity to create jobs.

Written by Mr Benedict Bithola, Manager Smart up Solar Bakery Nebbi Uganda.

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We have acknowledged growth this year because we sat down and realized that our niche market was cake buyers and so we invested a lot towards that in terms of machinery, baking tins, cake stand, refrigerator, commercial cake mixture, human resources, repairing of broken items, replacement of spoilt ones like the mirrors, the cake mixture and to add on that we enrolled in a one month training on cake decoration to perfect our style.

Prudence Vasta

We have made it as the only bakery dealing in large scale cake production and we are recognized in the West Nile region. The district has recognized us with awards of certificate of appreciation for our Outstanding contribution in transforming the lives of the young people. They pledge to support us especially in marketing and access to government loans and grants to support the youth.

Written by Miss Prudence Vasta, Manager Smart up Solar Bakery Nebbi Uganda.

More pictures from Nebbi Smart Up Solar Bakery:

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