In November 2018, Lekela completed the construction of the Eurekaville Crèche at our Noupoort wind farm in South Africa. This brand-new facility has the capacity to take care of 200 children between the ages of 2 and 6, addressing the community’s previous shortage of safe and secure educational spaces for young children.

In order to boost local employment in Noupoort, we opted to use a local ‘women-owned’ building contractor, Ferieda Magdalene Kei, to manage the construction of the Eurekaville Crèche. The team comprised three bricklayers, sixteen labourers, a driver and a local plumbing subcontractor, positively benefiting twenty local Noupoort households directly.

As well as using direct local employment, Eurekaville Crèche is built using bricks made by a local enterprise, the Sandawana Brick Manufacturing Company.

In 2017, we ran a business skills training course for over 50 local businesses, the Enterprise Development Programme, and entrepreneurs who took this course, including the Sandawana Brick Manufacturing Company, are still benefiting from it.

Through the Enterprise Development Programme, the Sandawana Brick Manufacturing Company now provides full-time employment to five local men and has recently purchased its third brick-making machine to meet local demand for its products.

Karoo Fresh Eggs is another example of a business that has found success through the scheme, and in fact both companies doubled their output and number of community members employed in 2018.

All of Lekela’s projects seek to improve local education, develop local enterprise and protect the local environment. Our work with the Noupoort wind farm is a great example of our work to create synergies between social infrastructure schemes and job creation.

Noupoort Wind Farm successfully reached commercial operations on schedule and on budget in July 2016, making it the first wind farm to successfully achieve operations as part of the third round of the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REIPPPP).

Situated in the Umsobomvu Municipal Area located 10km east of Noupoort in the Northern Cape the wind farm spans an area of around 7,500 hectares.

The 80MW project generates around 300,000MWh of clean renewable energy per year, supplying electricity to approximately 70,000 South African homes. The wind farm will offset around 300,000 tonnes of carbon emissions annually compared to traditional fossil fuel power plants.

The wind farm works actively with the local community to design and invest in meaningful socio-economic and economic development projects in the local area. It is anticipated that over the life of the wind farm over ZAR 170m will be invested locally in such projects.