Our activities in Senegal – Tambacounda
Since February 2011 we partnered with CORPROBAT (Collectif Régional des Producteurs Banane de Tambacounda).
CORPROBAT is a cooperative consisting of 37 banana producers along the River Gambia. Every plantation is also a village mostly without electric power or light almost no schools or health care facilities. We installed 26 solar home systems so far.Currently, the plantations are irrigated by huge diesel pumps taking the water directly from the river. We developed an intelligent irrigation system using solar powered pumps to replace them.
In October 2011 we visited them again to prove the feasibility of our irrigation system. Now we can calculate the costs for a pilot project, which hopefully will start soon.
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Watch the images:
- click image -The small, very tasty and sweet bananas from Tambacounda...
CORPROBAT consumes 720.000 liters diesel every year for their pumps. The price per liter is EUR 1.22 ($ 1.61) and will keep on rising. This is exorbitant for the banana producers, the usage of diesel is very damaging to the environment and there is a diesel shortage right now. Since the bananas are grown organic it is not possible to receive a certification as long as CORPROBAT uses diesel pumps.
Our concept is to replace the existing irrigation by a system of lots of smaller solar powered pumps with reservoirs - a water network so to say.
Of course this will be a big investment but amortizes within a few years. Afterwards the farmers will be independent. The costs for maintaining will be modest and they will be capable of developing their production and living conditions. Thirty-seven thousend people can now electrify their homes, build schools and hospitals on their own.