by FARAI SHAWN MATIASHE
SEKE, Zimbabwe, Dec 5 2025 (IPS) – When going home after school, Monica Ben not only takes with her a pen and exercise books but also a lantern to light the dark room and completes her daily homework in Mashonaland East province.
Known as the Chigubhu lantern, a Shona name for a bottle, this portable light was made using recycled materials by a 12-year-old learner, Ben, at Manyoshwa Primary School in Seke, a rural area 54 kilometers from Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare.
“Candles are expensive,” Ben tells IPS on a warm day at her school.
“Before this Chigubhu lantern, it was either I came early to do homework or I did not submit anything to the teacher.”
The lantern is charged at school during the day using renewable energy and Ben takes it home daily after school, giving her about four hours of portable lighting.
Making Lanterns From Electrical Waste
The school compound’s air was filled with palpable excitement from the learners who had just returned after a holiday.
Ben lives with her peasant farmers in a remote farming area that is hard to access even with an off-road car.
Most houses, including Ben’s, are not connected to the main grid, making it difficult for school children to read and do their homework at night.
A local innovator, Aluwaine Tanaka Manyonga from the capital, Harare, invented the Chigubhu lantern, a portable circular lighting product made from light-emitting diode (LED) lighting electronic waste.
It is housed in waste plastic bottles and tins and the lantern is rechargeable with solar energy.
Ben is one of the more than 100 schoolchildren at Manyoshwa Primary School who were taught how to make these lanterns using readily available electrical waste.
“I take an empty bottle and cut it in half. I then take a piece of cardboard and mark it with a pencil before cutting it. I install switch cables and close the light with a bottle top,” she says, smiling.
“I put a handle on it. Thereafter, I test the voltage in the battery before putting it inside.”
Godwin Kadiramwando, a headteacher at Manyoshwa Primary School since 2021, says it all started four years ago with a solar system installation at the learning facility.
“Manyonga did it for free. The solar system supplies power to one of the classrooms for lighting as well as charging smartphones and laptops,” he tells IPS.
The following year, Manyonga gave a class of Grade 7 learners, about 30, some Chigubhu lanterns so they could read and do their homework at night.”
Kadiramwando says in 2023, instead of giving them already-made lanterns, Manyonga decided to teach them to make the lanterns and fix any technical issues.
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