In a small village where the evening usually means darkness, a soft, steady glow now lights a handful of homes. The source of this light isn’t the national grid which hasn’t reached here but the mind and hands of a local man named Edwin, who has engineered a startling solution from what most people simply leave behind.
Using a homemade setup involving pit latrine waste, oil, and acid, Edwin has successfully generated electricity. It’s a raw, ingenious form of bio-energy conversion, conceived out of necessity and built from scraps. The system is unrefined, even perilous, but it works: for the first time, six households in Bukalama have light after sunset.
“I saw a problem darkness and I saw materials around us that everyone else ignored,” Edwin shared, standing beside his modest apparatus. “I started experimenting, and after many trials, I got a spark. Then I got a light.”
The journey from spark to village grid, however, is fraught with risk. Lacking insulated cables, Edwin uses barbed wire—the kind meant for fencing to transmit power to his neighbors’ homes. He has no proper fuses, no circuit breakers, and no real safety gear. What he has is a deep belief that his community shouldn’t have to wait for a connection that may never come.
His locally assembled transformer, he estimates, could support up to 100 homes. That’s his dream: to scale his invention safely and light up the entire village. But to get there, he needs help.
“I am appealing for simple things,” Edwin explains. “Proper positive and negative fuses, good wires, basic switches—things that can turn this from a dangerous experiment into a safe, reliable system.”
By day, Edwin earns his living through casual labor, saving what he can to buy more barbed wire for new connections. It’s a slow, painstaking process. Yet, the impact is already tangible. Families can now extend their days, children can study after dark, and evenings feel a little less isolated.
Local reactions are a mix of awe and concern. “We are grateful for the light,” said one neighbor, Miriam Nakato. “But we know the wire is sharp and the power sometimes jumps. We pray for Edwin to get what he needs to make it safe.”
Innovation in rural Africa often looks like this: born from constraint, fueled by determination, and limited not by imagination, but by access to basic materials. Edwin’s story isn’t just about energy—it’s about agency, the refusal to be left in the dark, literally and metaphorically.
As calls grow for sustainable, decentralized energy solutions across the continent, grassroots inventors like Edwin highlight both the stunning potential and the critical gaps in support for local innovators. He isn’t asking for a finished product or a large grant—just the fundamental components to ensure his village’s light doesn’t flicker out.
For now, Edwin continues his work, carefully winding barbed wire and adjusting his mixture, a quiet engineer turning waste into watts, one connection at a time. In the growing dusk of Bukalama, his lights shine not just as a practical victory, but as a testament to human ingenuity glowing against the odds.
