Group Wins Grant for Low-Cost Lighting

Last week, W. Hugo Van Vuuren ’07 was dining at Ghana’s most expensive hotel, its lushness visible—until the lights went off.

A humorous moment in retrospect, this is the reality in many parts of Africa, where even the continent’s most developed countries have consistent problems with lighting. Twenty-six percent of Africa’s population does not have access to electricity.

Fortuitously, Van Vuuren was eating among the winners of the World Bank’s Lighting Africa Competition 2008. He is a member of a team of Harvard students and alumni called Lebone Solutions—one of 16 groups to receive a $200,000 grant from the World Bank.

The international competition encourages the development of low-cost technologies that could potentially provide off-grid lighting to over 250 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2030.

Lebone Solutions’ device, which has been in the works for eight months, is a microbial fuel cell-based lighting system that generates a current from the energy produced by metabolizing microbes in soil or manure.

The technology produces enough energy to power a cell phone or a radio—little commodities that are especially important in a place with no electricity, said Alexander B. Fabry ’09, a member of Lebone Solutions.

The device was designed by a team of six students and alumni, including Van Vuuren, Fabry, Stephen H. Lwendo ’10, David M. Sengeh ’10, Zoe Sachs-Arellano ’07, and graduate student Aviva Presser. Professors David A. Edwards and Peter R. Girguis advised the project.

Van Vuuren, who is from Pretoria, South Africa, said the privilege of a Harvard education becomes starkly apparent every time he returns home, reminding him again of the mission of the project.

“We live charmed lives at Harvard,” Van Vuuren said. “It’s important to remember where you’re from.”

Without electricity, students cannot study after hours and clinics cannot be properly operated. Moreover, current light sources like kerosene lamps and candles raise safety issues, said Fabry, who is also a former Crimson associate arts chair.

The inequality in access to energy sources leads to exploitation, Van Vuuren said.

“The person who controls the light in the town has a disproportionate amount of power,” he said.

To prevent exploitation and ignorance about how to properly use the product, Lebone Solutions plans to oversee a grassroots system where African entrepreneurs sell the devices.

In July, Lebone Solutions will conduct a pilot study in Tanzania with 10 devices in 10 households, Fabry said.

In September, the team will distribute devices in Namibia, where a significant portion of the population is without power. The World Bank grant will be used to transport the devices.

Lebone Solutions has secured private funding from a British donor, whose name Van Vuuren would not reveal, to match the World Bank’s grant.

Members of Lebone Solutions are hopeful about the project’s success.

“It’s really interesting to see the process of turning something in the lab into something that can impact someone’s life,” Fabry said.

“We might be young and inexperienced, but we have access to the right technology and experienced mentors,” Van Vuuren said. “Hopefully our passion for Africa will do the rest.”

—Staff Writer Esther I. Yi can be reached at estheryi@fas.harvard.edu.