Ghana’s former Second Lady Samira Bawumia has launched an initiative to provide reliable solar power to underserved healthcare facilities in Africa, starting with a pilot to improve maternal and newborn care in Ghana.
The Powering Safe Delivery Initiative will equip selected Community-based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) compounds, maternity facilities and primary healthcare centres with solar photovoltaic systems, battery storage and essential maternal healthcare infrastructure.
Bawumia unveiled the initiative at an event at the World Health Organization (WHO) pavilion during the COP31 climate conference in Antalya, Türkiye, Accra-based JoyNews reported.
Unreliable electricity can disrupt deliveries at night, emergency procedures, patient monitoring and equipment sterilisation. Power cuts can also interrupt refrigeration for medicines and vaccines, particularly at facilities serving remote communities.
“No woman should have to risk her life giving life simply because the lights went out,” Bawumia said at the launch. She urged African governments to make maternal healthcare a priority in their climate adaptation and energy transition plans.
About 178,000 mothers and one million newborns die across Africa each year, many from preventable causes, according to figures cited by the initiative.
In Ghana, the institutional maternal mortality ratio rose to 110 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2024 from 109.22 in 2023, while skilled delivery coverage fell to 55% from 60.6% over the same period.
The initiative builds on the Safe Delivery Project run by the Samira Empowerment and Humanitarian Projects (SEHP). The project has distributed more than 11,000 birth kits to expectant mothers in underserved Ghanaian communities and trained 324 people, including 164 health workers and 160 traditional birth attendants.
“We can equip a mother with the delivery kit. We can train the midwife who attends to her, but if the facility has no electricity when complications arise, we have left a critical part of the problem unsolved,” she said.
Bawumia called for a partnership involving the Africa Women and Youth Climate Centre (AFRYWOCC), which she founded, Minagie Energy, the University of Ghana’s Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Studies (C3SS) and development partners.
The proposed partnership would identify facilities most in need, assess their electricity requirements, secure financing and arrange long-term maintenance.
The Ghana pilot is intended to provide a model that other African countries can adopt. The initiative also aims to create opportunities for young people through technical training, local maintenance work and jobs in renewable energy.
Bawumia urged governments, development finance institutions, philanthropic organisations and private companies to support the initiative. She said climate finance should help pay for improvements that protect lives and keep essential healthcare services running.
“I do not want us to leave Antalya with only photographs and speeches and expressions of goodwill. I want us to leave with a shared determination to identify our first facilities, mobilise the necessary resources, and then begin implementation,” she said.
She said the initiative would track how many facilities gain reliable power, how many health workers receive support and how many mothers and newborns benefit from improved care.
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