A Nun Built a Hydroelectric Plant in the Congo
Sister Alphonsine Ciza devotes most days in rubber boots, with a white veil found under a hard hat, operating the micro-hydroelectric plant.
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Sister Alphonsine Ciza devotes much of her day in rubber boots, with a white veil found under a hard hat, operating the micro-hydroelectric plant she constructed because of the daily electricity blackouts in the town of Miti, where Ciza lives found in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Ciza works continuously with a team of engineers and other nuns, greasing equipment and checking the gauges of a generator from the nearby reservoir, which is used to light up two schools, a clinic, a convent, and a church free of charge.
The New Hydroelectric Plant
If the residents did not have a hydroelectric plant, they would only have electricity for a few hours, three days a week.
“We nuns can’t function this way as we have to offer many services,” said Ciza, 55, from the town of around 300,000 residents close to Rwanda's border.
Blackouts in the Congo are a daily occurrence, an enormous central African country with about 90 million people that gets most of its power from a mismanaged, dilapidated hydropower system.
The Congo Government Exports more than it Gives
The Congolese government is working with foreign partners to expand the nation’s failing grid capacity. Yet, critics say the new projects focus too much on exporting electricity to bordering countries and powering mines.
Even though they receive millions of dollars in funding from donors, only about 20% of the Congo’s population has access to electricity, according to the World Bank.
In 2015, Ciza started raising money to build a hydropower plant, as she was tired of relying on candlelight and costly fuel-powered generators.
Ciza learned the skills as a young nun, fixing electrical issues around the convent, and she was able to convince her superiors to allow her to study mechanical engineering.
It took the convent only three years to get the funding of $297,000 to build the hydroelectric plant, and it now produces between 0.05 and 0.1 MW.
Advancing Education
Ciza’s was also able to get students at Miti’s Maendeleo college computers so they can now learn the necessary skills from screens instead of from textbooks.
Mweze Nsimire Gilberte, the headmistress, explained, “Before, the power usually would only turn on at nighttime when children were home from school.”
“Having this hydroelectric plant has been an abundant relief.”