Jinko Solar donates PV array to Tanzania schools

In my previous career, I wrote intelligence reports for the US government about China's creeping world presence. Even if I didn't mean for my reports about China's growing involvement in Africa or South America to be peppered with exclamation point, they were read that way. Look at what China is doing in Venezuela! China is building infrastructure projects in Nigeria! Especially if the projects were energy-related, no one in the US government saw anything good coming from China asserting itself globally.

So, I love seeing a story like JinkoSolar partnering with the charity organization, Power to the People, to supply solar panels to the Nyumba ya Mungu secondary school in Northern Tanzania. If for no other reason than to show the complexity of the motivations and consequences of China's growing Africa presence. Beijing is not a charity. They are in Africa for national self-interest. However, that doesn't mean it is all bad.

To make it even more interesting, the system will be installed in July 2012 by a team of volunteers form the US solar industry and JinkoSolar workers. US-China solar professionals cooperating on providing and installing solar panels to Tanzanian schools. Good example of not only how the clean tech industries from the two sides can work together but also for the benefit of a third party, namely African school children. This project should be the poster child for international solar cooperation.

JinkoSolar will donate modules with a combined capacity of 2.5kW for use in a rooftop array as part of the initiative to bring solar power to the developing world. In addition, JinkoSolar employees will help to educate the local population on the benefits of solar power in an effort to boost the take up of the technology in Tanzania.