Battery Hacking
“Necessity is the mother of invention”
Far from — and sometimes right under — inaccessible power lines throughout Africa, the need for light, for charging cell phones, for listening to radios doesn’t go away. As we ventured out to understand the adoption of PAYGo solar systems for a CGAP and FIBR study, our team found that many families had already replaced dirty, stinky kerosene with batteries “hacked” into new technologies to meet some basic power needs. Below are some resourceful examples we found in Tanzania, Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana.