CAPE TOWN - A 14-year-old boy is being hailed for generating electricity from biogas, lighting up several homes in Borana zone, southern Ethiopia, a recent report by BBC News Africa revealed.
Adan Hussein Dida, who charges each home in his village $0.87 per month, supports his family with the money he raises from his electricity project, BBC News Africa reports.
Dida, a grade eight student at Tula Web Primary School, says he embarked on the project to ease the suffering of villagers who lack basic services such as roads, hospitals and electricity, local media reported.
He started the project started from the backyard of his parents, using decomposing animal waste in a two-metre deep hole.
According to the BBC Africa report, his teacher, Boru Sora, says Dida is expanding his project to more houses in the village despite bad roads making it difficult for him to go to towns to purchase the equipment he needs.
Dida said his dream is to pursue engineering at the newly established Borana University in Yebelo.
Ethiopia has abundant renewable energy resources and has the potential to generate over 60,000 megawatts (MW) of electric power from hydroelectric, wind, solar and geothermal sources.
As a result of Ethiopia's rapid GDP growth over the previous decade, demand for electricity has been steadily increasing.
In 2018, the bulk of Ethiopia's 4.5 GW of power generating capacity came from Fourteen (14) hydro-power plants, which account for about 85% (3.8 GW) of the country's total capacity, making it the main energy source, according to reports.
However, in spite of all its available potential, the country's energy sector is still in its infancy stage. The majority of Ethiopia's population lives in the rural area without access to modern energy and relies solely on traditional biomass energy sources, writes scientific journal aimspress.com.
Recently, the East African country began producing electricity for the first time from its Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) – a massive hydropower plant on the River Nile.
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