AKON’S SOLAR ACADEMY TO BRING LIGHT TO OVER 600 MILLION AFRICANS

LAS Recording artist Akon attends the “Knockout Night at the D” boxing event at the Downtown Las Vegas Events Center on May 22, 2015 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Gabe Ginsberg/Getty Images)

Multi-platinum-selling musician and producer Akon is giving back to his home continent with his recently launched initiative Akon Lighting Africa

Speaking at the second United Nations Sustainable Energy for All Forum in New York recently, the Senegalese-American musician elaborated on his Akon Lighting Africa project. Launched last year it aims to provide electricity to over 600 million Africans who are currently living without it.

The project plans to launch a Solar Academy in Mali towards the end of this year to teach students “every aspect of installing and maintaining solar-powered electric systems and micro-grids,” according to the project’s website. The academy will provide African engineers and entrepreneurs with all the skills they need to build and install solar panels.

The fact that Africa experiences over 320 days of sunlight annually – that’s about 10 months a year – makes this project highly feasible. Also, besides providing electricity, the project could also indirectly reduce the high number of fire-related deaths on the continent.

According to Inquisitr, over 3,5 million Africans a year lose their lives to house fires and pollutants as a result of limited lighting resources. The installation of solar panels will largely eliminate the need to use these dangerous alternatives.

“We have the sun and innovative technologies to bring electricity to homes and communities. We now need to consolidate African expertise and that is our objective. We are doing more than just investing in clean energy. We are investing in human capital. We can achieve great milestones and accelerate the African transformation process on condition that we start training a new generation of highly qualified African engineers, technicians and entrepreneurs now,” Samba Bathily, one of the co-founders of the initiative, said in a press statement.

The initiative’s aims are very close to the musician’s heart because for a large part of his life, he was one of the 600 million on the continent who went through life without access to electricity.