Shadows to Light: Solar Public Lighting Illuminates Informal Settlements at Night

When I first visited PJS Informal Settlement in Cape Town, in February 2018, and toured its labyrinth of narrow paths, there was no way I could have known that I would become an expert at navigating this maze. My colleague at the Institute for Science, Technology and Policy, Stephanie Briers, and I were PhD students in the ISTP’s Urban Research Incubator, and as part of the interdisciplinary program, we had recently agreed to collaborate on a transdisciplinary project. We were investigating whether a wall-mounted public light could address the public lighting challenges common to Cape Town’s informal settlements — and to study the impact of that technology on the residents’ experience of life at night.

The community leaders who showed us around PJS that day explained that the current public lighting, two high-mast lights (30-40-meter-tall flood lights), did not provide enough ubiquitous light for residents to see well at night. They told us that people were afraid to leave their houses in the dark to use the shared toilets located throughout the neighborhood, so many people used buckets inside their home instead. They also showed us that one of the high-mast lights was a crime hot spot, because criminals found it easy to rob people blinded by the brightness as they emerged from the dense, dark pathways.

This visit marked the start of a project intended to provide each of the nearly 800 households in the settlement with a solar public light, mounted above each person’s front door. The light would be close enough to the ground to easily brighten the paths, without creating shadows. Using solar energy would make the public lighting resilient in the face of power outages, which are very common in Cape Town. When we discussed the idea for the project with stakeholders in Cape Town and colleagues at ETH Zurich, many people thought this might too big of an undertaking, even for two PhD students working with a team of residents from PJS, and a local NGO, the Social Justice Coalition.

The project had two phases: an experimental phase, in which about 300 randomly selected households were eligible to receive a free solar light, and a final phase, in which all remaining households were offered a free light. Our first lighting shipment, intended for the experimental phase, arrived in March 2020. We employed and trained a team of residents to install the lights, but not long after we began working, we discovered the lights had been shipped with a defect that caused them to stop working within two weeks. I started to think the concerns about the project may have been justified. Just days later, when countries all over the world began locking down in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, it was clear that some creativity would be necessary to finish the project safely and successfully.

With the help of then-ETH Master’s student, Daniel Rieben, and a local lighting engineer, Keyaam DuToit, we were able to solve the problem with the first shipment of lights. Using tools he had at home, since ETH was shut down, Daniel Rieben figured out how to replace the defective part and get the lights working again. With travel still restricted, we used Zoom and Whatsapp to demonstrate the repair to Keyaam DuToit. Once the strictest lockdown rules in South Africa were lifted, Keyaam was then able to work with some of the previously trained residents of PJS to repair the lights. By October 2020, about 280 households received a repaired solar public light and the testing phase of the project was finally underway.

With the lessons learned from this test phase, as well as Keyaam and Daniel’s technical support, we found a new lighting supplier and ordered solar public lights for the remainder of the households. To ensure that as many PJS residents as possible had the opportunity to participate in the project, we employed and trained a new team of residents to test and install the final phase lights in August and September 2021 — meaning every household in PJS Informal Settlement that wanted a light, received one.

As I had expected, a lot of creativity, not to mention dedication, from many people was indeed necessary to finish this project. Over the course of the project, the PJS community leadership as well as nearly 40 other residents worked on various phases of the project becoming ambassadors to their neighbors, who were understandably wondering about how the project would proceed after the technical challenges we faced and the COVID-19 lockdown. Finishing this project would not have been possible without so many of these residents working together to come up with innovative solutions — from safely procuring supplies to calming concerned neighbors to fixing and installing lights — in the midst of a global pandemic.

The short video below, made with a generous award from the Alternative Service Delivery Unit supported by GreenCape and the City of Cape Town, shares the results of the project from the perspective of many of the people who helped to make it happen, despite the many challenges — both predictable and unpredictable — that we faced.