Month: June 2019
The inside story of a school in Lagos where students pay school fees with plastic bottles
Balikis Muritala lives in Ajegunle, Lagos State, fries and sells yam for a living, makes less than $2 a day, and finds it hard to send her children to school.
It’s almost impossible for her to meet up to the school fees demand of $22 per term (a term is 3 months). Neither she nor her husband makes enough. Life is hard for them, as it is for most people in Africa’s most populous nation and the poverty capital of the world.
Nigeria, Africa’s biggest economy, is bedevilled by an alarming rate of out-of-school children (10.5 million) and recently tagged the Poverty Capital of the World by World Poverty Clock, estimating that 91.5 million of her people live below the poverty line as at March 2019.
Despite its huge deposits of natural resources and human capital, the country is plagued with underdevelopment, corruption and an alarming level of illiteracy. The commercial capital city, Lagos, surrounded with coastal lines, also faced a huge waste problem. According to the state government, residents dumped 450,000MT plastic wastes into ocean bodies annually causing environmental pollution, flooding, posing serious health risks to human beings.
Muritala’s family is one of the many Nigerian families who can hardly send their children to school.
Facebook/Patrick Mbaramba
Members of the PTA at Morit Intetnational School after a meeting with the NGO, African CleanUp Initiative (Facebook/Patrick Mbaramba)
To solve this problem, Morit International School, a private school in Ajegunle teamed up with an NGO, African CLEANUP Initiative, to allow parents who are unable to afford school fees for their kids pay with plastic bottles through an educational solution called RecyclesPay Educational Product.
RecyclesPay is an initiative created to provide solutions to educational, environmental and climate issues around the world. Alex Akhigbe, the executive director of ACI, says it is one of the ways of giving back to the community. The NGO, according to Akhigbe, serves as a linkage between the school and the recyclers with the aim of getting 10,000 children off the street next year.
Speaking on the idea of exchanging bottles for her children’s access to school, Mrs Muritala says that at first she felt shy picking bottles off the road and neighbouring streets. “Before now I used to feel shy picking the pet bottles. But now, I have seen value in those waste plastic bottles.
“Paying school fees is not an easy thing for me and the pet bottle idea has actually reduced this burden for my family. We have no stress running after school fees anymore, we now use little profit we get from the yam to feed and take care of the household,” she says.
She also explains how her customers help her in getting the bottles and in exchange for some extra pieces of yam.
Hajia Ajara Mohammed, a housewife, says the pet bottle initiative has helped her to cushion the cost of school fees on her family.
“We are grateful to the school for this initiative especially some of us with more than two children.”
How they get the pet bottles – indirectly solving environmental challenges
Most of the parents we talked to said they have inculcated the habit of picking waste bottles around their environment to help pay their children’s school fees.
“We pick bottles off the road, collect some from our neighbours and save them for the school. My children also help sometimes. My family has imbibed the habit of keeping pet bottles after we empty the content. My husband also assists,” Hajia Mohammed tells Business Insider SSA by Pulse in Pidgin.
Mrs Muritala says, “When they first started it [the initiative], it did not look ideal (the act of picking up the bottles seemed uncomfortable to her), but later I joined them when I saw other parents making use of the initiative instead of looking for school fees for their children.
“Most of my customers help me with bottles. I now give them extra pieces of fried yam or potato for helping me out.”
She says she sometimes fights people for the pet bottles around her community because she has realised their importance.
The initiative is coming at a time when global attention is turning to waste pollution amid environmental concerns endangering nature and human existence.
UN says more than 8 million tonnes of plastic waste end up in the ocean
According to recent research conducted Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), plastic pollution has increased tenfold since 1980.
Last year, the United Nations called for proper disposal of plastic waste, saying more than 8 million tonnes end up in the ocean.
António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, during the World Environment Day 2018, said a healthy planet was essential for a prosperous and peaceful future. In the same year, the United Nations and the European Commission jointly hosted an event at the United Nations HQ to launch Global Plastics Platform to fight plastic pollution together.
Ajegunle school where a pet bottle is N1 and more parents can pay school fees
Patrick Mbamarah, director at Morit International School, narrates how the idea began and how the school is contributing to reducing the rate of out-of-school children in the country.
“In the past, I used to have challenges collecting school fees from the parent but later realised that these parents genuinely did not have the money and want to make sure their children are educated.
“This development made us (the school management) after meeting with the parents and teachers association to key into the recycling waste initiative in exchange for school fees with African Clean Initiative (ACI).”
He says because of the initiative, the school is oversubscribed as a naira is equal to a bottle and more plastic bottles means more school fees.
https://www.pulse.ng/bi/strategy/the-inside-story-of-a-school-in-lagos-where-students-pay-school-fees-with-plastic/n2nlzwc
May 30, 2019 10.17am EDT
Author Samuel Ayokunle Olowosejeje
Research fellow, University College Cork
Lengthy power cuts are pretty much a daily experience in Nigeria. The country’s epileptic power supply has been identified by businesses as the second biggest obstacle to doing business in the country, after a lack of access to finance.
This unreliable power supply is a major hindrance to Nigeria’s economic growth. It also costs the country an enormous amount of money. Quoting Nigerian government data, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) says that a lack of access to reliable electricity costs Nigeria an estimated US$29 billion a year.
The situation comes with environmental and health risks, too. Many individuals, households and organisations have resorted to fossil-fueled generators. Nigerians spend an estimated US$14 billion a year on small-scale generators.
The country’s current power generation capacity, according to the IMF, is about 13,000MW. But often electricity generated and transmitted is below 4,000MW/hour. Nigeria’s generation capacity is comprised of gas-fired and hydro power stations. However, the system operates well below capacity. This is partly because of problems with gas supplies to fuel the power stations.
That’s where solar power comes in. It holds enormous promise for addressing Nigeria’s unreliable energy supply. Estimates suggest it could increase the availability of electricity to almost 80 million people who currently have none. It could also diversify the country’s energy portfolio. Most of this promise is based on the fact that solar-based generation capacity can be built up far quicker than traditional power plants. It can also be built in chunks, starting small and adding on the capacity as time goes on.
Solar can also be connected to a country’s electricity grid. Or it can be run off the grid. This makes it the most practical option for improving access to electricity across Nigeria. It can also be used on its own, or as part of a hybrid mix with other technologies.
Cost-effective and reliable
I conducted a case study with some colleagues to ascertain the economic value of solar power to Nigeria. We calculated that a transition to solar-based energy could reduce the country’s electricity costs by up to 132%.
These savings are based on the current cost of running Nigeria’s electricity grid supported by petrol or diesel generators used by businesses and households.
The other advantage of going solar would be its impact on the cost of generating and distributing electricity. Solar costs are coming down. They have become cheaper than the fossil fuel alternatives, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency. The agency, an intergovernmental organisation, supports countries’ transition towards sustainable energy.
Nigeria’s electricity system is saddled with a huge gap between the cost of generating electricity and the tariffs it receives. This gap was estimated at $2.4 billion in 2015-17. The tariff gap, says the IMF, can be closed by reducing the cost of generating and distributing electricity, and through increasing the tariff by at least 50%.
The huge gap between the tariff and operating costs has meant that Nigeria’s privatisation of its electricity sector has not delivered improvements in the availability of reliable electricity. This is in part because the electricity distribution companies inherited a derelict infrastructure from the Nigerian government through the National Electric Power Authority, which was unbundled in 2005 and privatised in 2013. They cannot afford to upgrade this.
It’s also because power consumers are not willing to pay for an unreliable electricity supply.
Its potential in application
Solar-based energy, especially when done on a large scale, can contribute to reducing the cost of generating and distributing electricity in Nigeria.
Renewable technologies could also help to develop an electricity market where those producing surplus energy can sell it to those who have a shortfall. Currently, such a market is limited by the conventional grid systems. These are designed based on centralised big power plants and a one-way flow of energy from the power plants to the customers.
Also, the design of conventional electricity grids is such that they are only stable to the extent that demand and supply is well balanced. They are therefore not well suited to the intermittent supply of electricity that renewables generate. The solution to these limits of conventional grids could be micro-grid clusters that can source energy from a variety of independent power producers.
The potential for building solar units in small chunks and adding more capacity as time goes on makes solar-based power generation ideal for plugging the gaps in Nigeria’s energy requirements. It is the most technically feasible and cost-effective solution to the challenge of extending electricity to 80 million people who are currently without access to energy. Solar, in combination with other technologies, can reduce the cost of doing business in Nigeria.