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My First Days in Nairobi, Kenya by Funke Aderonmu



Three flights, two layovers, five airplane meals, and 23 hours later I have finally arrived in Nairobi! It wasn't an easy journey but it has been a swell couple of days since landing in Kenya and I can't wait to see what the rest of the month holds in store.

Thanks to a generous grant from the UC Davis Blum Center and the College of Letters and Science, I am spending the latter half of my summer working on a project with Bright Green Renewable Energy, a startup social enterprise based in Nairobi, Kenya. Bright Green specializes in providing affordable clean energy and fuel sources for middle to low income households and community organizations in its surrounding area. At a little over one year old, the team at Bright Green has been developing its clean burning charcoal briquettes and plans to send out pilot samples to interested clients, which is where I come in. For my project, I will be collecting and analyzing survey responses from the clients on their interactions and satisfaction with the charcoal briquettes. The information from the survey will be used be used to make modifications to the product that better meet the needs of Bright Green’s target users. 

 My first two days in Kenya were a bit of a blur as I began adjusting to the 10 hours difference from California and recover from jet lag. I arrived at my home stay at 5 am in the morning and after meeting most of my host family members, I commenced the sleep marathon that ended as abruptly as it began. Three days into my arrival, I started my first day of work. My day began with an introduction to the Bright Green team, a crash course on the company’s history and a brief tour of the briquette factory.
Bright Green Briquette Factory 

 At the factory, various organic waste material and charcoal dust stuffed into multiple sacks sat along the wall of the production building. Wooden crates were lined up and spread out across most of the half acre of land where freshly made briquettes are placed to dry. From the raw materials in sacks to the drying crates to the production room, I explored the concrete manifestation of what CEO Chebet Lesan had imagined just over a year ago when she founded Bright Green.

 As Chebet explained to me on my first day of work, Bright Green had been borne out of an innovation design summit she had attended in Tanzania. Over the course of a month, Chebet worked with a team of innovators from D-Lab at MIT to design a local solution that met the energy needs of a rural community near Mt. Kilimanjaro. After coming up with a design for eco-friendly briquettes the community could use for cooking without cutting down trees for wood, she decided to replicate this in the her urban community of Nairobi. Despite facing major startup challenges to make an organic, eco-friendly product that was also cheaper than the competition, she eventually established Bright Green in early 2015 and began producing briquettes.

For my part, I am thrilled to working with a team lead by a passionate innovator for a worthy cause. I bring to this project my research experience and the drive to apply my studies in economics and International Relations to the real life challenge of helping Bright Green more effectively meet the needs of its target demographic. Ultimately, I look forward to pushing forth local solutions to global problems, one community at a time.

Bright Green Founder Chebet (left) and myself in front of the Nairobi skyline.

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