Climatelinks Photo Gallery

Thanks to a Power Africa-supported mini-grid project developed by Bugala Island-based Kalangala Infrastructure Services Ltd (KIS), the Eunice Memorial Medical Centre on Uganda’s Bugala Island now has reliable, clean electricity and can utilize newer medical tools and devices, as well as refrigerate critical medicines and vaccines. The center’s founder formulated his plan to build this private medical facility following a series of Power Africa workshops on the Productive Use of Energy (PUE) in 2018. To boost connections to the mini-grid and propel the island’s economic trajectory, Power Africa and KIS embarked on this campaign to increase activities that require power and provide a service. Power Africa and KIS conducted a survey to determine PUE opportunities on the island and the latent entrepreneurial capacity. With this information, KIS, with Power Africa grant support, executed a robust PUE promotional and training campaign. The Power Africa/KIS awareness campaign resulted in more than 400 new connections and stimulated new industry services such as dairy production, steel welding, and fish processing.

Pictured here is a resident of Mandaue City Cebu in the Philippines. He is a tricycle driver who diverted into containerized gardening after the Covid-19 lockdown in the middle of 2020 led to financial losses.

To mitigate the fear of food shortage during the height of the Covid-19 Pandemic, he immersed himself in self-sustained gardening, utilizing his small space in the middle of a highly urbanized city. Using these plastic containers for gardening not only helps food security but also reduces plastic waste. This picture was taken on May 14, 2021, after he was given recognition by the Cebu Local Government through the "SugBusog" Program. They showed appreciation for his initiative and for being a model for the community.

Ampersand is Africa’s first and leading integrated electric motorcycle and transport energy solution. They build affordable electric vehicles and charging systems for millions of motorcycle taxi (moto) drivers in East Africa. In May 2022, Ampersand showed Power Africa around Kigali eMoto-style and explained eMobility challenges and opportunities and how electric vehicles can solve multiple problems on energy systems while creating economic opportunity on the continent. This cleantech transport solution is climate-smart tech for Africa being designed and developed right here. It unlocks the productive use of energy and economic opportunity by moving people around cost-effectively and efficiently while doing less harm to the planet.

This is a photo of the coastal clean-up activity we conducted on June 05, 2022, in Ibo, Lapu-Lapu City, in the Cebu province as a part of our participation in the "Aksyon Para Sa Natatanging Mundo" (Action for One Planet). As part of this campaign, simultaneous environmental protection activities were led by the Philippines Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).

A sustainable world depends on every human living on this planet! We must work together hand in hand with a common goal towards the protection of our planet. Today is the right time to wake up and understand what the world needs. Save the world, and everything will be repaid. Rather than thinking about how far the North Pole is from the South Pole, realize that these two places are part of one planet. Whatever you do today affects not just you locally but the entire world. Local action has a global impact!

Taken on May 18, 2022, in Jinja, Uganda, this picture shows a woman and her colleagues from the Uganda Electricity Generation Company Limited (UEGCL) at the Isimba Hydroelectric Plant in Uganda. About 30 employees from UEGCL were at the 188-MW Isimba Falls hydropower project (HPP) to get trained under an executive exchange on hydropower best practices by American experts. This project, located on the White Nile, was initiated by the Ugandan Government in 2013 and is one of its most important hydropower undertakings. Along with her colleagues, the woman pictured here gave experts from the Chelan Public Utility District, Moore Ventures, and Mead & Hunt a tour of the power station while experts spoke extensively on dam safety and water resource management. Under the Energy Utility Partnership Program, the United States Energy Association (USEA), with USAID Power Africa funding, has been helping improve Uganda’s energy generation by working closely with the UEGCL since 2017. Over the past five years, the program has prioritized building the capacity of Uganda’s hydropower plants through improving operations and maintenance, asset management, and dam safety. The country has an ambitious goal of achieving 80% of its electricity access by 2040 compared to a current access rate of about 30%, and most of it will be powered by hydroelectricity. However, Uganda is at risk of natural disasters and extreme weather events leading to disasters such as floods, droughts, and landslides that have increased over the last 30 years, hindering efforts.

A family in Kaolack, Senegal, enjoys the afternoon together, watching the news and staying informed thanks to their solar-powered television.

Part of the goal of the GREENPEACE movement is to achieve "green cities." This photo was taken on June 05, 2022, and shows a group of cyclists aligned with the GREENPEACE movement gathered in front of the Lapu-Lapu monument before they begin a tour around Mactan Island. Wearing shirts with the message, "Fossil Fuel Free Before 2050," they seek to raise awareness about global warming as well as petititon for building a nuclear power plant on Mactan Island.



This groups' actions bring us closer to achieving the universal goal of climate neutrality.

In the Saint-Louis region of Senegal, a mother bathes her child with the help of light from a solar lantern.

A rural farmer in Mali can access weather information and agricultural tips to manage his farm thanks to his smartphone, which he charges on his solar home system.

This image shows a warden for Lower Zambezi National Park in Zambia who is also a mentor to Zambia’s first all-women community scout patrol unit. COP26 placed a renewed focus on local communities as central to the success of nature-based solutions (NBS) to mitigating climate change. Through the Integrated Land and Resource Governance Program, USAID is ensuring that NBS empowers women and youth, in part by promoting equal opportunities to participate in decision-making and benefit from employment opportunities. By working with Zambia’s Department of National Parks and Wildlife (DNPW), Forestry Department, and conservation NGOs to normalize women’s full participation in resource protection and combat harmful gender norms, USAID is ensuring that solutions to climate change and biodiversity loss are inclusive. The program is creating opportunities for women to take on leadership roles, enter formal employment, and be a voice for conservation efforts within their communities. It is building women’s leadership and empowerment skills across a broad coalition of government, NGO, and community partners.

A community member and her neighbors plant coconut tree saplings on their plots on the agribusiness firm Grupo Madal’s land in Zambezia province, Mozambique as part of a coconut agroforestry initiative. Greater tenure security is a prerequisite for land-based climate change mitigation efforts, for communities must have the rights to manage and benefit from improved land use. Prior to USAID support, this community member and 1,300 farmers (85% women) were informally farming on the company’s land, often on plots less than a quarter hectare. With support from the USAID Integrated Land and Resource Governance (ILRG) program, Grupo Madal granted these farmers land use agreements and farming contracts, allowing them to enter Madal’s supply chain as commodity growers for crops like beans and coconuts. Each farmer was given a larger plot, allowing them to grow their own food for household consumption alongside crops for Madal. The farmers were provided with inputs like seeds and fertilizer and agricultural extension services to train them in sustainable agroforestry practices. By intermixing coconut trees with subsistence crops, these farmers are improving soil quality and creating a sustainable ecosystem for agroforestry generation for years to come. By giving landless farmers land use rights, they are less likely to clear-cut new land for agricultural expansion.

A farmer plants a eucalyptus sapling on a plot in Zambezia province, Mozambique. USAID is helping communities and the private sector to partner in combating climate change. Following years of large scale land acquisitions to grow commercial timber on degraded lands across Africa, multi-national forestry firm Green Resources has started a process to relinquish a substantial portion of its land in Mozambique and support communities to register their land rights, with technical assistance from USAID’s Integrated Land and Resource Governance program. Communities gain skills to manage forest plantations for community livelihoods and climate change mitigation goals and to-date over 230,000 hectares of land in Mozambique have been relinquished. Many of these parcels had standing timber on them, so the company is helping communities manage these resources in a sustainable manner. This includes providing communities with technical support to care for trees so they can be a renewable source of community wealth, and helping them set up viable timber off-take businesses. This partnership is providing communities with improved tenure security, expanded economic opportunities, enhancing forest management capabilities, and promoting strong local development for years to come. 

A farmer leads government enumerators on a boundary walk around her four-acre farm in Traditional Area Mwansambo in Malawi. This farmer inherited her plot from her parents and has relied on natural boundaries like trees and streams to know where her plot ends and her neighbor’s begins. But as local populations grow and land becomes increasingly scarce, these natural boundaries may be removed or become less effective. As a result, formally documenting land ownership has become a critical part of the government’s strategy to promote inclusive sustainable development. In Malawi, 70 percent of the population lives on customary land as smallholder farmers, and less than 10 percent have some form of land documentation. These rates are significantly worse for women. Under the USAID Integrated Land and Resource Governance (ILRG) program, the farmer and her neighbors have been able to document their customary land holdings, creating greater tenure security for themselves and their families. Mapping customary land holdings is a key piece of sustainable land use planning. It can help communities strategically decide where to expand in order to reduce encroachment on natural resources like community forests and animals’ habitats, and better balance community needs and conservation imperatives.

This farmer previously grew rice on his steep piece of land but received very poor yields. When he begins to harvest cardamom later this year, he stands to make much profit. Catholic Relief Services piloted a cardamom project with more than 200 farmers in the Gorkha district who had shady, steep land that was not well-suited to other crops. With support from Catholic Relief Services’ agriculture experts, they stand to make a good profit from land previously unsuitable for other crops. And there is an additional environmental benefit of watershed protection and reducing erosion.

Catholic Relief Services has helped build transitional shelters for the most vulnerable families following the devastating earthquake measuring 5.8 magnitudes on the Richter Scale in the Lamjung district of Gandaki province in Nepal in May 2021. This earthquake affected vulnerable communities who were yet to rebuild their houses after the damage of the 2015 Nepal earthquake. Catholic Relief Services supported vulnerable families like Dil Maya and her family to build a permanent base for a transitional shelter along with other raw materials like nails, rope, and CGI sheets to complete the temporary shelter structures. She also received COVID-19 essentials and food supplies as part of the emergency response since the COVID-19 pandemic was also at its height at the time.

Earthquake Reconstruction work continues in Samagaun, the last village in Northern Gorkha where Catholic Relief Services has worked. Since the devastating 2015 Nepal earthquake, Catholic Relief Services has trained more than 2,600 masons in just one area to build structures that could withstand another earthquake, as well as support hundreds of households to rebuild the homes they lost in the devastating earthquake.