A Calgary-based renewable energy developer is leading a drive to provide solar-powered lighting to West African villagers who’ve created a protected area for endangered hippopotamuses to attract eco-tourists.

Canadian Hydro Developers Inc. has launched a $130,000 fund-raising effort to provide solar-powered lighting units to about 10,000 people living near the Wechiau Community Hippo Sanctuary in Ghana.

The villagers have moved their farms and fishing camps back about two kilometres from the Black Volta River along a 40-kilometre stretch, to create an undisturbed area where the hippos can feed at night.

The Wechiau hippos are one of only two remaining populations of the large mammals in Ghana.

Canadian Hydro CEO John Keating says the company’s fund-raising will help send 550 solar-powered lighting units, left, to assist West African villagers in Ghana.

“As a company, we think this project demonstrates our own social and philosophical beliefs,” says John Keating, CEO of Canadian Hydro, which develops clean “green” energy including windpower, small run-of-river hydro and biomass.

“It demonstrates that renewable energy has the power to transform people’s lives and rural communities, and that conservation and development can go hand-in-hand,” Keating adds.

Canadian Hydro’s partners on the project include the Calgary Zoo, the Calgary-based Light Up the World Foundation and the Nature Conservation Research Centre in Accra, Ghana.

The Light Up the World Foundation (www.lutw.org) makes highly efficient white light-emitting diode units.

The solar-powered units would replace, for up to 550 family compounds in the area, the crude, kerosene-fuelled lamps that are dangerous, dirty and expensive, Keating says. “Half the people at Wechiau are children who need safe lighting to encourage literacy.”

Photo courtesy of Canadian Hydro Developers


Although the solar-powered units, wiring and switches will be donated, each family compound in Wechiau will make a financial investment by buying a $12 rechargeable battery, which stores the solar energy.

So instead of continually buying kerosene for lamps that fill the villagers’ flat-roofed mud homes with unhealthy emissions, each family compound will buy a replacement battery every five years.

At a fund-raising kickoff last week at the Calgary Zoo, Canadian Hydro donated a cheque for $11,040 to buy 48 of the solar-powered lighting units – one for each of the company’s 48 employees.

Each unit costs $240, including fabrication, shipping, installation in Ghana, and training the villagers to maintain and repair the lighting system.

The Calgary Zoo, which has been working with the Wechiau community since 1996 to establish the hippo sanctuary, has an engineer in Ghana who’ll help train the villagers.

Canadian Hydro got involved through Keating’s brother, Brian, head of the conservation outreach program at the Calgary Zoo.

“The fact that it’s my brother’s company is an aside,” Brian Keating says.

“It’s exciting to see a company that’s a ‘green’ company involved in creating electricity doing something for a worthwhile Third World project in a place that’s very poor and very far away from home.”

The Calgary Zoo’s conservation fund has been financially supporting the hippo sanctuary since its inception, although Brian Keating says it was the Wechiau community that had the idea to create the protected reserve.

The reserve had about 1,000 visitors last year, which is sufficient to make the venture financially viable, he notes. “The Wechiau hippo sanctuary project is already now being looked at as a model for development of similar projects.”

Even before last week’s fund-raising kickoff, Canadian Hydro had received about $27,000 in donations for the lighting project.

“Twelve thousand dollars in Ghana gets a school built,” John Keating notes. “Your charitable dollars stretch so far in Africa, it’s hard for us to imagine.”

The fund-raising, which Canadian Hydro hopes to include schools in Calgary and elsewhere, will continue until Earth Day next April.

Individuals and organizations interested in donating can e-mail the company at canhydro@canhydro.com or call (403) 269-9379.

(Mark Lowey can be reached at mark@businessedge.ca)