Solar lamps, stoves and mobile phone chargers changing villagers’ lives in East Africa

Children do homework under a new solar light in rural Kenya. Solar firms are helping have light up villages in East Africa. FILE PHOTO | NYT

For 70-year-old Regina Ocholla, a resident Nyakach in Kenya’s Kisumu County, a kerosene-fuelled tin lamp is a painful reminder of a dark past — literally.

Mrs Ocholla says she has used one since she was a child and for the bigger part of her adulthood. But this dark past is all behind her now, thanks to a clean energy project launched recently in her area.