Our Emergence

Our story begins in 2009 with a group of volunteers from Malawi and abroad, working and living with and within village communities in Thyolo District in South Malawi 

We were a true melting pot of people, from a variety of cultures, beliefs, education levels, but all aspiring to ensure equal rights to all, preserve our common home, planet Earth, and respect God’s creation. 

By working with, exchanging questions and ideas with people from different walks of life, experiencing life in rural communities where access to resources such as water and electricity are limited, we got closer to understanding the life and challenges of rural Malawians.   

What we learned through personal insights and many community meetings, was that one of the main challenges faced by sustainable development and economic empowerment were the intense burden, both in terms of time and money, caused simply by organizing basic needs such as water, lighting and cooking.  

The access to knowledge of alternatives to traditional fuels, such as wood, charcoal and paraffin, was an obvious key to unlocking development on several levels, including health, education, economy and environment, but as we could see, severely overlooked.  

From there, we started our research on the efficiency and adoption of alternative cooking and lighting devices; this included interviews, surveys, desk-studies, and field-tests.  

In 2011, we officially handed in our request to register RENEW’N’ABLE Malawi (RENAMA) as a non-governmental organization to the Malawi Government in order to professionalize burgeoning work.  

Mission

Our mission is to enhance knowledge transfer, information exchange, common learning and coordination of and among renewable energy related projects and stakeholders in Malawi, to contribute to an enabling environment for large-scale uptake of renewable energy technologies and advocate for the sustainable development of a healthy energy sector.  

Values

We have seen that energy poverty hinders basic human rights to a healthy life and the pursuit of happiness in many ways, on the individual, national and global level. 

As such, we believe that the development of a strong, transparent and diversified energy sector with active informations sharing, best practice sharing among all stakeholders as well as vivid policies in all energy related sectors are a prerequisite to reducing energy poverty. 

We believe that: 

• Households who want to overcome poverty need to escape the current trap that most of their time & money is spent on basic living needs like water, energy fuels (firewood, charcoal, paraffin, battery charging) and inefficient subsistence farming; 
• People need sustainable basic energy at their disposal to study, communicate, cook safely, innovate, and be safe;
• People need access to information tailored to their understanding, education and language to foster innovation and help themselves out of poverty - this includes access to practical information on and sourcing of simple, low-cost technology;
• Low income households need access to adequate financing options to acquire adequate start-up equipment to diversify income sources and create entrepreneurship; evidence has shown that revolving funds and micro-finance can play a huge role in the advancement in Renewable Energy Technologies (RET);
• "Development" should ensure sustainability for future generations.