Ethiopia. Elias and the solar mini grid in Ethiopia
©UNHCR/Tiksa Negeri
Location icon Ethiopia

Climate action: Elias lights up his community

UNHCR is working with refugee communities to prioritise climate-smart projects that provide employment and help protect the environment.

More than 200,000 refugees live in five camps around Melkadida in Ethiopia. Most of them were forced to flee conflict and drought in Somalia. The nearest national electrical grid is more than 200 kilometres away. But thanks to solar energy, this community now has power, light and business opportunities.

Elias Nunow Hirab is central to this project. He arrived in Melkadida in 2011 when he was just 14 years old. 

“When I first came here, we didn’t know anyone, and my mother started collecting firewood to sell, which kept us fed. She was able to pay my school fees, and I started learning English,” Elias says. 

A few years later, Elias was given the opportunity to take part in an electricity training program through a UNHCR partnership. He then helped form a cooperative with fellow refugees to install and manage solar-powered streetlights.

When UNHCR’s partner decided to invest in the area’s first solar mini grid in 2020, Elias’s cooperative was given the responsibility to help build and operate the new energy system. It was designed to supply reliable, clean energy to local households and shops. 

Ethiopia. Elias and the solar mini grid in Ethiopia
©UNHCR/Tiksa Negeri
Elias Nunow Hirab fled drought in Somalia and now works at the solar mini grid expansion in the Melkadida refugee camp in Ethiopia.

“We have good teamwork, we are very committed, and we have a good relationship with the community,” Elias said. “We always get support from UNHCR and its partners, and we save for the future.”

In naming their new business enterprise, Elias and his fellow cooperative members used a word from the Somali language. “The word IFTIIN means light ... and we bring light to the town,” Elias says. “The mini grid has brought so much happiness to the community.”

Among those benefiting is 27-year-old Zamzam Abdullah, a member of the Ethiopian host community who runs a small shop. The mother-of-five says that solar energy lights her shop and helps her refrigerate some of her produce. 

Ethiopia. Zamzam in her shop
©UNHCR/Tiksa Negeri
Zamzam Abdullah waits for customers in her shop in the Melkadida refugee camp, Ethiopia.

UNHCR’s renewable energy initiatives

Providing access to clean and sustainable energy transforms people’s lives. UNHCR’s renewable energy initiatives include powering refugee camps with solar. This ensures a constant source of clean power, replacing polluting diesel generators.

It also has many positive flow-on effects in the communities. It means health centres can operate life-saving machines reliably and medication can be refrigerated. Street lighting allows people to move around camps in greater safety at night, particularly women and girls. Solar-powered lamps also ensure they can work, study and socialise long after the sun has gone down.

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