The blockchain-based project just switching on the lights for 3,000 Senegal villagers

Written by Philipp Pieper, co-founder, Swarm

There are still 733 million people around the world who don’t have access to electricity. For these communities, many of the daily activities you and I take for granted are impossible. Pumping water, storing food and medicine, even reading after dark, all require electricity. A lack of consistent, reliable energy also has a profound impact at a macro level, limiting productivity, hindering economic growth and forcing people to leave their homes in search of work. Closing this energy infrastructure gap and bringing electricity to more communities is one of the reasons the #connect2evolve project was founded. Started in 2019 by employees of Siemens Energy, the project was set up to deliver clean, decentralised power to communities with little or no access to electricity. And it intended to use distributed ledger technology (DLT) to track return on the project’s investment as well as its positive social and environmental impact. Transparency of how funds are used is one of the biggest ch…