OMAWA: Solar-Powered Business Initiatives

Since our beginning in October 2022, The Solar Foundation has evolved to focus on holistic solar solutions which means combining solar infrastructure plus productive appliances for schools, community centers and healthcare clinics. This project is an example of our more comprehensive approach, utilizing the clean power the OMAWA Microgrid project at the Iring’ong’weni Primary School in N. Tanzania (see Microgrid for OMAWA in our list of projects) with a series of micro-business initiatives to generate income for the maintentance and sustainability of the microgrid, and the operations of the school.

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In 2025, we worked with OMAWA to help create the first two solar-powered micro-business initiatives:

1. Cold Drinks Initiative supported by a new solar-powered refrigerator
2. Phone Charging Initiative

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The cold drinks initiative procured a refrigerator and startup materials for the initiative such as ice cream materials, packaging and drinks like soda, juices, water and milk. The phone charging initiative supported the acquisition of five 6-way extension cables and 20 phone chargers so community members could pay a small fee to use clean power from the microgrid to charge their phones and other devices.

According to a report from Joseph Maro, executive director of OMAWA: "Through these two initiatives we were able to collect money and open a KICOBA group using a mobile phone. Money collected from the initiatives is saved in the mobile phone and expenditures are approved by both parties, OMAWA and the solar initiatives committee at Iring’ong’weni Primary School."

The funds earned from these initiatives are already contributing to the operations of the microgrid. In July 2025, the microgrid had a fuse leakage.  Through income collected from the business initiatives, OMAWA was able to fix the problem and the operations are continuing successfully.

We hope this is only the beginning of new opportunities for solar-powered businesses that contribute to OMAWA's success. We are currently actively raising funds to support more chargers for the Phone Charging Initiative because the current chargers are in very high demand. We also hope to work together in 2026 to support a solar-powered Barbershop Initiative in which students will be trained in hair dressing skills at the school, and more income will be raised for the shared community pool.

Please contact us if you are interested in helping support these sustainable solar-powered initiatives. Working together, we can help ensure that clean renewable power and productive appliances benefit those who need them the most.

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