Electricity

In Ruhango, Rwanda, Karambi Village has organized around the need for electricity. Their MicroGrant is for up to $2000 and will help them set up an electrical line into the village, providing a main source that people can then build off of to get electricity into businesses and homes in the area.

A number of the village members have already organized themselves around specific businesses and formed cooperatives that produce goods such as honey, bricks, banana wine, and pineapple juice. One of the most established cooperatives made products from bananas and pineapples. Their factory was clean and well kept with a small store and office on its side. They bought fruit directly from farming cooperatives in the region and had gained support from a Netherland based development organization for machines to press the juice and process the wine. The cooperative had twenty people and their shared profit would run between 200,000RwF and 500,000RwF a month which comes out to be about $17- $43 a month per person.

The MicroGrant is going toward an infrastructure project, not benefiting a specific kind of business or a specific home, but the communities ability to access and use electricity if they need it and for whatever purpose they choose.