Godfrey Baluku Kime is the Mayor of Kasese, a city in Uganda with a population of 126,000 inhabitants. Kime has spearheaded an ambitious programme to shift his city and the wider district of Kasese to 100% renewable energy by 2020. Kime is motivated to be the need to boost energy access in the region to improve living standards, increase public health and bolster the local economy. He is also responding to the deforestation caused by reliance on solid fuels for power and the obvious impacts of climate change that threaten the water supply and cultural identity.
Kime says, “my desire to set a 100% renewable goal was strongly motivated by the alarming climate- induced degradation of the snowcapped Rwenzori Mountains, from which the communities here derive there livelihood, water supply and identity. The people of the Rwenzori ‘Banya rwenururu’ get their name from the snow ’Esyonzururu’. Without the snow, our name will be no more thus”.
