Posts tagged Africa

Field Report: Green Education in Ethiopia

I am now on a flight back from Ethiopia (located near the horn of East Africa, surrounded by Sudan, Somalia, Kenya and Eritrea).

I lived for the last three weeks in the northern region of the country, in the high plateaus and mountains of Tigray.  Due to elevations of around 7,000 feet, Tigray’s climate is ideal with “13 months of sunshine,” as locals happily tell you. Daytime temperatures are in the low 80’s, with 60’s at night. 

Ethiopia and Sub-Saharan Africa are coming out of a 15-year drought with a rainy season that has already produced the best rainfall in 30 years. Fields of green crops blow in the wind — the harvest is expected to produce record amounts of the local grain Tef, as well as wheat, barley, and vegetables.

The idea for this trip germinated about 2 years ago, when I returned from a whirlwind tour of rural African schools supported by Vancouver, Canada-based Imagine1Day.org.  I had told my wife that we must take our kids to see African schools.  From that impulse the idea sprouted to create an adventure trip for “create-tributors” who would raise money to build and support a primary school.

Well, it all happened — my family got to visit our own sponsored community school called Laela Wukro.

Imagine 1 Day is a family non-profit that was endowed originally by Chip and Shannon Wilson, my brother and sister-in-law.  Its mission is to provide cutting-edge self generating primary education in Ethiopia.

The Ethiopian government covers teachers’ salaries, but top-down support ends there. The really incredible thing about these schools is their self-supporting initiative.  They aim to generate enough income internally for operating expenses after 3 years.  This means that the teachers, community, and students plant crops on school property or community-donated land in order to sell the harvest and generate income.  Some communities where irrigation is more difficult will fatten goats and cows instead, selling them to generate cash.

I would like to see public schools in the US start to generate sustainable, green income sources like Ethiopia is doing, rather than have to sell junk food, wasteful magazines and plastic toys to fundraise.

The average Ethiopian earns less than one dollar per day. Even so, modernization efforts are in full view everywhere, having expanded greatly since I last visited two years ago.  I saw a slew of useful cell/data towers, which have popped up all over the countryside, and I noticed phones in the hands of some of the farmers.

3-wheel rikshaw taxis, also prevalent in India and Thailand, have swarmed into small Ethiopian towns like beetles.  It costs about ten cents to ride these across town, and this amenity is quickening the pace in the rural areas where previously walking was the only form of transportation available to most citizens.

I got a chance to visit a giant 120 mega watt wind-power plant installed by the French company Vergnet Group outside of Mickele, Ethiopia.  Since Ethiopia has negligible oil and gas reserves, it must rely on the inventiveness and hard work of its people to generate income, and it is to its credit that renewables like wind are part of its strategy.

Clean tech is not only cleaner, but society benefits as a whole.  In most poor countries that discover significant oil reserves (like Chad) there is corruption, environmental degradation, prostitution and drug abuse following on the heels of fast oil cash.  It is a good omen that Ethiopia is bootstrapping itself to a cleaner prosperity instead.

I would guarantee that Ethiopia will go through an amazing transformation in the next 20 years.  It seems to me that once cell phones become wide-spread, incomes invariably rise as the whole economy becomes more efficient, particularly because micro-finance using cell phones becomes feasible.

Sure, this culture is not known for its industrial efficiency. Yet in time, I know that the patience and hard work of Ethiopians will move them from food-insecurity toward the ideal conditions for realizing their talents, and reaping well-deserved rewards. It’s the kind of optimism you gain after you meet a people, learn about their culture, and delight in the gleam of hope in their eyes as they work together for change.