Newsletter April 2024

 

Newsletter Turn Sun Into Water

April 2024

Assessment of the questionnaire campaign at Gogma, Solar Pumping Workshop 2024 and outlook

Dear friends of Turn Sun Into Water, As we enter the spring of 2024, we would like to share with you the association's recent activities, including a new socio-economic household survey in the village of Gogma, an invitation to the Solar Pumping Workshop 2024 and the association's outlook for this year.

Situation in Burkina Faso and Gogma

In 2022, Burkina Faso experienced two military putsches destabilizing its political landscape. Despite the difficulties faced by the Burkinabe population in the face of terrorism, conditions seem to be improving in some regions. In Gogma, the situation seems to be stabilizing and security risks diminishing. According to the household survey we carried out in November 2023, 89 of the 90 households questioned felt safe in their village. However, the current political context does not allow us to return for the time being. Fortunately, Arouna Darga, vice-president of Eau Fil Du Soleil and originally from Burkina Faso, occasionally visits the village, enabling us to maintain links with the Gogma inhabitants

Socio-economic household survey in Gogma: Understanding the evolving impact of solar pumping solutions

Last November, our Burkinabé colleagues from Best Sigma traveled to Gogma for the third household questionnaire campaign, a crucial step in our post-implementation monitoring of the solar pumping system. We conducted a similar campaign just before installation in October 2017 and then 1 year after installation in October-November 2018. The November 2023 campaign, carried out 5 years after the system's installation, aims to thoroughly assess its impact on residents' daily lives. A wealth of data This three-week campaign, involving 90 households in the village of Gogma, enabled us to collect detailed data on several aspects, including water accessibility and sanitary conditions, and to observe the social and economic situation within the village. This information forms a solid basis for the scientific work carried out by Ange in the GeePs laboratory at CentraleSupelec, in collaboration with Imperial College London. Together with the information gathered during our last 2 campaigns in 2017 and 2018, they form a unique information base for assessing the evolution of the situation on-site and the impact of the solar pumping system on the community. The questionnaire revealed, for example, that the solar pump was often used when a ceremony or festivity was organized in the village, confirming its essential role in village life. Thanks to your support, we were also able to distribute school supplies to village children during this visit!

Séverin et Mamoudou during the survey in Gogma

Solar Pumping Workshop 2024: Mark your calendars! 

EFDS and the GeePs laboratory are delighted to invite you to the Solar Pumping Workshop 2024. The conference will be dematerialized and free of charge. It will take place online from April 24 to 27, 2024.

An opportunity to discuss solar pumping!

The interdisciplinary fieldwork carried out by our community on the subject of solar pumping continues to bear fruit. The Solar Pumping Workshop is an opportunity to give a voice to the researchers, students, and entrepreneurs who contribute to the sustainable development of people's access to drinking water. Presentations will cover a wide range of topics, from the socio-economic optimization of pumping plant sizing to the study of the impact of pumping on water resources to the detection of cleaning on solar panels.

To facilitate communication and exchanges, the conference will be dematerialized. Initially, videos will be broadcast on YouTube from 9am on April 24, enabling you to view all the presentations. The videos will take the form of 30-second REELs, 5-minute SPOTs, and 10-minute ORALS, all subtitled in English and French. Two videoconference discussion sessions will be held on April 25 and 27 to enable you to talk to the various speakers (1 hour each, simultaneous discussion in French and English).

Outlook for 2024

This year we will continue our data collection and monitoring work on the Gogma solar pumping system, as we have done for the past 5 years. We would particularly like to thank Séverin, who is in charge of data collection at Gogma, without whom we would not have any feedback on the village's solar pump. These data will be used in our scientific research and can be available upon request.

Support our action!

Since January 2018, the Eau Fil du Soleil association has been taking charge of collecting data from the Gogma pumping installation and making it available to the research teams. The association's costs are around €50 per month. We also occasionally support student projects involving solar pumping, such as Thomas Vezin's project in Burkina Faso to install a water resource monitoring system or Sébastien Ferreira's project in Senegal to develop a tool for predicting water demand in a rural village. To enable us to continue our action, you can donate via the Helloasso platform. To thank you, we're offering you an estimate of the photovoltaic output from your roof or plot of land!

The Turn Sun Into Waater team would like to thank you for supporting our projects.

Yours faithfully

Turn Sun Into Water