海角大神

The dateline on the story is a place called Miti. Its subject sounds like something cooked up at MIT: An innovator with a gift for electrical engineering goes DIY on a small-scale hydropower project that also carries the power to change lives.

In fact, the backdrop is the rickety grid in the blackout-prone Democratic Republic of Congo. The innovator: a Congolese nun whose convent helped her get training after she showed an interest in, and an aptitude for, fixing circuitry when things flickered.

鈥淭hey saw in me the talent [for electrical engineering],鈥� , 鈥渟o they offered me an opportunity to go study [it].鈥�

That would pay dividends. After a few years of donor funding, beginning in 2015, the convent also secured enough money to build, near a reservoir, a micro-turbine plant that cranks enough energy for the convent, a clinic, and two schools.聽

To help children study, and to keep a clinic鈥檚 lights on, Sister Alphonsine is not afraid to get her hands dirty greasing the gears.

The power, of course, is clean. While this use of hydro is chiefly about convenience 鈥� leaning on cheap, renewable energy 鈥� it also sidelines costly, emissions-belching gasoline or diesel generators. So this sister鈥檚 confident act also represents a pushback on the perception that the Global South, broadly, in the climate crisis story.聽

Miti shows how ingenuity can offset government shortcomings, notes Monica Mark, the Monitor鈥檚 Africa editor. It鈥檚 also a small example 鈥渙f how Africa is leapfrogging technology that鈥檚 contributing to the climate crisis,鈥� she notes.

Locally, it鈥檚 a story of pure practicality.

鈥淗aving our own turbine,鈥� one Miti school headmistress tells Reuters, 鈥渉as been a great relief.鈥�