The Day a Solar Lamp Changed My Life

I grew up counting nights by how dark they felt.

In our part of Nigeria, as in most parts of Africa, darkness was not just the absence of light; it was a condition that shaped behaviour. When the sun went down, work stopped, reading stopped, conversations slowed, children were hurried indoors, and kerosene lamps flickered weakly, their smoke stinging the eyes and coating ceilings black.

Electricity, when it came, was unpredictable. We learned early not to trust it. You studied while it lasted and memorised what you could before it vanished again.

Then one evening, everything changed quietly, without ceremony.

A Small Object, A Big Shift

It was a solar lamp. Small and portable, something that is unremarkable by today’s standards.

Someone I can no longer remember brought it into our home and placed it on the table. It charged during the day and, at night, gave off a steady, clean white light, with no smoke, smell or noise.

That night, I read longer than I ever had before.

I did not realise it then, but that lamp did more than light a room. It rearranged time. It gave me extra hours of clarity, safety, and focus, and changed what night meant.

Years later, after sitting in energy conferences and reading hundreds of policy papers, I still think about that lamp whenever people reduce energy access to statistics and targets.

Because energy is not first about megawatts, but rather about possibilities.

The Global Numbers Miss the Point

Today, the world measures energy access through impressive-sounding metrics.

The World Bank reports that around 600 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa still lack electricity access.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) tracks connections, generation capacity, and investment flows.

These figures matter. But they do not capture what energy feels like or what its absence steals.

A household that receives electricity for three hours a day is considered “connected.” A clinic with a grid line but no reliable power is counted as “electrified.” A child who studies by torchlight because the grid fails at night disappears into the averages.

Energy poverty is not binary. It is lived on a spectrum of uncertainty.

From Kerosene to Compromise

For millions of African households, the alternative to grid power is still kerosene.

Kerosene lamps are dangerous, expensive, and toxic. According to the World Health Organisation, household air pollution causes millions of premature deaths globally each year, disproportionately affecting women and children.

Yet kerosene persists because it is familiar, portable, and crucially available.

The solar lamp that changed my life wasn't revolutionary technology. It was a reliable one.

This is where so many energy conversations go wrong. We obsess over scale and forget suitability. We chase grid expansion while ignoring what actually works for households right now.

Access Without Reliability Is a Hollow Promise

Over the years, I have visited communities that were officially “electrified” but still lived in darkness most evenings.

Power arrived late, leave early, voltage fluctuated, appliances broke, businesses hesitated to invest and parents still bought candles "just in case."

As Energy Transition Africa documented in our analysis of unreliable power and public health, energy insecurity has consequences far beyond inconvenience.

A fridge without power cannot store vaccines.
A clinic without light cannot operate safely at night.
A child without steady light struggles to learn.

Access without reliability is not access at all. It is a managed disappointment.

Why Small Solutions Matter

The solar lamp wasn't a national infrastructure project. It didn't require sovereign guarantees or multilateral finance.

But it worked.

That is the quiet lesson Africa keeps teaching the world: small, decentralised solutions can deliver outsized impact.

This is why solar home systems, mini-grids, and standalone renewables are so powerful. They don't wait for national reform to succeed. They work around failure instead of being paralysed by it.

As ETA has argued in its analysis of Africa’s decentralised energy opportunity, mini-grids and off-grid systems often deliver power faster and more reliably than centralised alternatives.

The same logic applies at the household level. A solar lamp is not a grid. But it is light that stays.

The Dignity of Control

There was another difference the lamp introduced: choice.

We decided when to turn it on. When to turn it off. Where to place it. We did not wait for an outage schedule or apologise for using too much power.

That sense of control matters more than we often admit.

Energy systems that empower users even at a small scale restore dignity. They reduce dependence. They make people planners rather than passengers.

This is why decentralisation isn't just a technical decision, but also a social one.

What the Lamp Taught Me About Policy

Today, when I read energy strategies and climate plans, I look for one thing first: Does this improve lived reliability?

Not capacity on paper.
Not connections counted.
But whether someone can study, cook, deliver a baby, or run a business without interruption.

Too many policies still prioritise what looks impressive to financiers over what feels transformative to families.

The lamp taught me that progress does not always arrive with fanfare. Sometimes it arrives quietly and changes everything.

A Future Built From Small Certainties

Africa’s energy future will not be built only from mega-projects and transmission corridors. It will also be built from millions of small, reliable improvements stitched together.

Solar lamps.
Home systems.
Mini-grids.
Batteries.

Each one extends the day a little longer. Each one restores a little trust.

And trust, once rebuilt, is the foundation of development.

I no longer remember the brand of the lamp. I don’t remember who brought it.

What I remember is the feeling of certainty that the light would not disappear mid-sentence.

That certainty is what energy access should offer everyone.

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“Energy didn’t just give me light. It gave me time, and time changed everything.”