OLOIKA, KENYA (Photo by Jonathan Torgovnik/Reportage by Getty Images).
Thanks to Practical Action for their help in providing data for this post.
For many students and teachers across the African continent, energy poverty – the lack of access to reliable energy sources – is a challenge faced every day both at home and at school. In fact, 90 million children in sub-Saharan Africa go to primary schools that lack electricity. In Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Malawi and Niger alone, over 80% of primary schools lack access to electricity. That means no projectors and presentations in the classroom, no fans or air conditioning units, no night time or evening classes, no computers or access to the internet and much more. Here are five additional ways that energy poverty affects education:
1. Energy poverty greatly reduces teaching resources and classroom materials.
Without electricity, teachers aren’t able to make copies of school assignments or connect to the internet to research what activities or materials are available online. They also can’t access online resources, such as videos and other multimedia sources, in their classrooms as valuable methods for instruction. As a result, teachers are unable to provide their students with the quality of education they deserve.
Classroom in Djibouti
2. Energy poverty complicates work for staff and school administration.
School administrators are required to keep documentation of student’s and faculty’s grades and attendance rates manually on paper, instead of keeping a reliable, online record.
3. Energy poverty means limited working hours for students to study and complete assignments.
Many children in the developing world walk long distances to get to school from home, often leaving or returning in the dark. If, as is often the case, their house doesn’t have a source of energy, these students aren’t able to study at home in the evening. They are often forced to seek other sources outside their houses, sometimes at gas stations or under street lamps, in order to have enough light to complete their schoolwork. Families that do have energy at home often rely on kerosene lamps to provide light, a practice that is expensive, poses serious health risks.
4. Energy poverty discourages teachers from working in areas without access to electricity.
The lack of electric lighting, televisions, computers and other services deters well-trained and well-educated teachers from living and working in communities that may need them the most.
SHOMPOLE, KENYA (Photo by Jonathan Torgovnik/Reportage by Getty Images)..
5. Energy poverty reduces the amount of time that children spend in school.
Children are oftentimes forced to collect firewood or clean drinking water for cooking, heating and drinking instead of attending class, preparing for an exam or completing homework assignments. Alternative fuel sources or devices, like smoke hoods that cook food more efficiently, require the use of little to no firewood. Solar-powered water pumps provide families with easily accessible drinking water and reduce the number of cases of diarrhea and other water-borne illnesses that contribute to disease and poor school attendance rates.
Energy access has real implications for educational attainment across the continent.
Only half of primary school students in Abu Hasheem, a small south-eastern state in Sudan, received passing grades on their exams in 2007. That number increased to 100 percent after the Sudan Multi Donor Fund-National sponsored a project to provide solar power to the community. Success rates like this can be achieved across sub-Saharan Africa if more schools were provided with solar lights or other means of access to electricity.
Tell Congress to pass the Electrify Africa Act – a bill that will help provide 50 million people with access to electricity for the first time.
Updated June 25, 2015.
