Finding Her Passion
“Born and raised in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, founder and CEO of Green Scene Energy PLC, Rekik Bekele, grew up with the privileges of a big city’s infrastructure. Though she regularly experienced power outages, it never occurred to her that other families navigated the darkness of the night without the lighting she enjoyed as a child. It was not until 2008, when she graduated from Addis Ababa University with a degree in electrical engineering, that she encountered a world so different from the one she knew.’Immediately after graduating I had the chance to work as an engineer for solar installations in some deep rural areas,” Bekele said. “One of my first assignments was to install a solar system for a hospital in Qoddaa, an area in Ethiopia’s Shishinda District. There was no electricity whatsoever. It was revelatory to witness situations in which nurses were delivering babies in the dark with a mobile phone sandwiched between their teeth, hoping that the battery life didn’t run out.’
After helping to finish the installment of the solar-powered lighting system, Bekele recalls the community’s celebration that carried on into the night. She remembers the blissfulness that permeated the atmosphere and an old man that compared the moment to shaking the hands of God.”
