In Case You Missed It: 9/12/16 — 9/18/16

Pix­abay

Has­san II Mosque in Casablan­ca, Morocco

This week’s most impor­tant head­lines out of and about Africa.

In this week’s news, Moroc­co’s mosques tran­si­tion­ing to solar ener­gy, Burun­di­an refugees are offered a uni­ver­si­ty edu­ca­tion in Rwan­da and Ethiopi­an Elec­tric Pow­er signs a deal with neigh­bor­ing countries.

Green pro­gram to pro­vide solar ener­gy for all mosques in Morocco

One of the 15,000 mosques expect­ed to run com­plete­ly on solar energy.

Moroc­co launched the Green Mosques pro­gram two years ago in hopes of  sav­ing mon­ey. The pro­gram seeks to raise aware­ness of renew­able ener­gy to the 15,000 mosques in the king­dom. Moroc­co has one of the largest mosques in the world. Moroc­co seeks to pro­vide all mosques with LED light­ing, pho­to­volta­ic sys­tems that con­vert light into elec­tric­i­ty, and solar water heaters. The agency respon­si­ble for pay­ing the mosques’ ener­gy bill is the Moroc­can Min­istry of Reli­gious Affairs.

Rwan­da offers uni­ver­si­ty edu­ca­tion for Burun­di­an refugees

Burun­di­an school girls wait­ing for class to start.  Mahama, in East­ern Rwan­da, hous­es the largest Burun­di­an refugee camp in Rwan­da. Those who escaped from vio­lence in Burun­di were unable to fin­ish their high­er edu­ca­tion jour­ney. Rwan­da has opened its high­er edu­ca­tion insti­tu­tions to the refugees and are also pro­vid­ing oth­er basic neces­si­ties such as clothes, mat­tress­es, soaps, bed­dings, shoes and scholas­tic materials.

Access to high­er edu­ca­tion is lim­it­ed for Burun­di­an refugees in Rwan­da. For those who have com­plet­ed their high school edu­ca­tion or in the mid­dle of their ter­tiary school­ing, Eng­lish lessons are pro­vid­ed. Mahama camp cur­rent­ly hosts more than 49,000 refugees.

Ethiopi­an Elec­tric Pow­er to fos­ter eco­nom­ic integration 

Ethiopi­an Elec­tric Pow­er (EEP) is a pub­licly trad­ed com­pa­ny that seeks to engage in the devel­op­ment of geot­her­mal resources and the con­struc­tion of pow­er plants. The com­pa­ny cur­rent­ly has agree­ments with Dji­bouti, Kenya and Sudan. EEP is cur­rent­ly under­way with sign­ing a 400 megawatts pur­chase agree­ment with Tanzania.

Ethiopi­a’s expor­ta­tion of ener­gy has drawn sup­port from Japan’s Toshi­ba cor­po­ra­tion. Toshi­ba seeks to con­tribute projects in Ethiopia. The com­pa­ny will assist to devel­op and man­u­fac­ture major equip­ment, cre­ate oper­a­tion and man­age­ment guide­lines, co-oper­ate in per­son­nel devel­op­ment, and start a waste heat uti­liza­tion busi­ness. The devel­op­ment of geot­her­mal pow­er will assist Ethiopia in increas­ing its gen­er­at­ing capacity.