Visit on the field in Senegal: feedback on the impacts
Diane Lacaille, in charge of the enterprises’ partnerships, visited 5 projects supported by Synergie Solaire between 2010 and 2018. Discover her testimony and a feedback video about the impacts of the actions carried out
As part of the documentary “Impacts of renewable energies in West Africa: an energy revolution in motion”, directed by Thierry Barbaut from La Guilde – Micro Projects Agency – in partnership with Finergreen and Synergie Solaire, Diane went to the field to carry out an impact audit.
Discover an extract from the documentary
Témoignage
“The contribution of Synergie Solaire is financial, but also human with the exchanges between the local actors and the renewable energy sector’s experts: prior to the project with the analysis of the sizing, during the project and downstream through monitoring which helps maintenance. However, I noticed the necessity for the demand to come from the field, through local NGOs. Then, everyone is a beneficiary, but also an actor in a system he could benefit from; this is the condition which makes the project successful.
The themes of the projects visited are very varied: health, education, craft industry, entrepreneurship… And the impact of these developments through energy is not arithmetic, but exponential: men and women who benefit from better health, time and energy savings in their daily tasks such as grinding millet, drawing water from the well, or who benefit from more efficient means of production, can work in the evening, take literacy classes, help their children in their school homework in the light of a solar lamp. They can develop their skills, gain autonomy and then develop their professional activity or new economic systems.
This allows to create profitable business models which could be duplicated and scaled up, and why not give access to credit. I saw a competent, dynamic and eager youth who wants to come through their difficulties (the average age in Senegal is 17 years old, and the higher education rate is constantly increasing). They just need to be stepped on.
Most of the projects supported by Synergie Solaire are located in rural areas. People live there without money, outside the system. Our support (thanks to the enterprises from the renewable energies sector) is essential to initiate different development processes through sustainable, clean and economic energy. It is a first impulse that will allow a leverage effect.”
Diane Lacaille, Enterprises Partnership Manager