Author: Michael Chung

Back to where it all began

If you have been following our social networks (Twitter | Facebook), you would have seen that the team left Kigali for Minazi last weekend to start manufacturing the Izuba.Boxes, the battery boxes for our standalone solution.

Minazi was our first kiosk and where it all began. In 2008, the founders of e.quinox chose Rwanda as their test bed for the idea they had from their group project. 5 years later, we are now a fairly established student project, with 5 kiosks and helping around 500 households. New committee members elected every year bring new ideas into the organisation, while following the aim of our original founders – to find the blueprint solution to rural electrification.

The journey out of Kigali

As our hydro kiosk in Rugaragara is where we shall implement our new battery boxes this year, Yuchen and I travelled down to the site yesterday, to do ground work before the big day and also do some more testing on our boxes.

In the past few days, I have been saying to the crew that I didn’t feel like I am in Africa. In the capital Kigali, it very much feels like a capital city, as if it were in the West. There are a few high rise buildings, shops everywhere, working traffic lights (although the green man does walk very awkwardly) and well, miles and miles of paved roads.

The September Crew has landed!

Hello all, welcome to our summer trip blog from Rwanda! 4 of us caught a very early flight from Heathrow on Monday and arrived in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda in the evening. Most of us thought the 10-hour flight, with a connection at Brussels, was very good – apart from Yuchen who missed the croissant for breakfast and the ice cream for the snack, which apparently “were the most important meals of the day”.

Joining the other 4 team members already on the ground, we have so far made a good start to the battery box manufacture today. We spent most of the day at Kigali Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) figuring out if our plan in London was the best way for the production.

Hilti donates tools to e.quinox

Hilti is an international world leading company that provides power tool and fixtures equipment to the civil engineering industry. Last year e.quinox members got in touch with contacts at Hilti to help with the provision of specialist tools necessary to build our Rugaragara kiosk. Hilti kindly donated to e.quinox two specialist kits of drilling equipment which allowed for the successful implementation of the kiosk. This year Hilti has generously donated thousands of pounds of cordless tools including drilling and cutting tools that will allow us to carry out further civils work to improve the kiosk.

“Hilti donated some tools to e.quinox