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Free solar mobile phone chargers to empower rural women
Pius Sawa
May 11, 2007

http://new.aitecafrica.com/node/576

Power shortage puts Uganda on the list of the worst performing countries in information communication technology

The rural population is hard hit when it comes to communication through mobile phones. For instance, a person in a local village where there is no electricity will have to pay some money to charge a phone away from his or her location, and that involves travelling. The time spent for one to collect a phone being charged in the nearest town affects the manpower that would have been invested in say farming or business. Worse still, sometimes the phones are not fully charged and it means spending more time and money recharging.

If, one pays five hundred shillings to charge a phone, plus one thousand shillings for tranport, yet the phone takes only three days to go powerless, it means one has to pay twelve thousand shillings per month on charging alone. In a year one spends close to 150,000 shillings.

Such money means a lot to a peasant in the rural village who has to pay school fees and other family needs. A hundred thousand shillings is enough capital to grow an acre of beans, sorghum or maize.
However there is a ray of hope to remedy the problem. Motorola company has introduced a new innovative technology of phone charging called Motorpower Kiosk.The project was launched on May 10th 2007 in Kampala.

Each Motorpower kiosk is charged by a 55 Watts Direct Current (DC) inverted solar panel, capable of charging twenty phones simultaneously.

The project will offer free mobile phone recharge services for Motorola phones,and is mainly targetting at women in the rural areas,intenting to start up small businessess. This will enable them to communicate and therefore know how to market their products and sell at a profit.

Motorpower, according to Nikesh Patel, the senior sales director mobile devices business, for Motorola Africa says the project is designed to empower entreprenural women by providing them with the foundations to manage their own sustainable motorpower businessess.

The MotorPower team will provide the women with an introductory business start-up package including four Motorola handsets and a business skills training course. This is the first of its kind initiative in Africa.

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