News

NCYN and its U.S. Partner, Lebone, Win the 2008 WorldBank IFC Lighting Africa Development Marketplace Competition!

9 May 2008

NCYN and its U.S. partner organization, Lebone Solutions, Inc., a social enterprise based at Harvard University, is one of the 16 winners of grants ranging from U.S.$150,000 to $200,000 from the World Bank. The news came this past week, when representatives of Lebone -- including project leader Hugo Van Vuuren, a native of South Africa - were flown along with 51 other finalists to the final competition in Accra, Ghana. The competition originally attracted more than 400 applications from groups all over the world with proposals to solve the problem of off-grid lighting and energy availability in Africa.

Lebone is currently developing microbial fuel cells (MFC) in collaboraiton with researcher Peter Girguis from Harvard University and organic polymer light-emitting diode (PLED) technologies with Richard Kirk of Polyphotonics in the United Kingdom. They will be conducting their first MFC and LED field study in the foothills of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania this July and August.

Starting later this year and continuing next year, Lebone and NCYN plan to bring clean, affordable energy and bright lights to off-grid villages in several underdeveloped regions of Namibia. We will work directly with our network of aspiring youth entrepreneurs to mobilize new enterprises and micro enconomies to bring the technology to thousands of households in isolated areas of Namibia.