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  • ACLENet's Mission: To decrease deaths, injuries and property damage from lightning across Africa.

    ACLENet's Mission: To decrease deaths, injuries and property damage from lightning across Africa.

    Your donations help reduce lightning mass casualty events among children by installing lightning protection systems in their schools, providing behavioral education to students, teachers, and the public on how to decrease their risk of injury, and encouraging the adoption and enforcement of internationally accepted standards for lightning protection.

  • DBA note: ACLENet also does business as The African Centres for Lightning and Electromagnetics Network.

    Also doing business as the African Centres for Lightning and Electromagnetics Network, ACLENet is a nonprofit working in Africa, founded in 2014 and incorporated in both the USA and Uganda in 2016.

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ACLENet's Impact

Alexandra Migrant Settlement, Gauteng, South Africa (photo credit GSalamander)

Lightning kills in many ways

Most Africans have no 'lightning safe' place they can go to when thunderstorms occur. 

In the US, we say 'When Thunder Roars, Go Indoors' but that is the WRONG thing to say in sub-Saharan Africa where nearly 90% of the dwellings are made of sheet metal or mud brick with roofs of generations-old, tinder dry thatch, plastic or metal sheets, sometimes held down by rocks and tires in the mistaken belief that the 'rubber' tires will protect from lightning strikes.

Even when people move to the city in search of employment, they will often live in 'shantytowns' like Alexandra for many years before they can afford better housing.

For those in rural areas, lightning can cause keraunoparalysis (kerauno = Greek for lightning), a temporary paralysis lasting minutes to hours, that can prevent even the healthiest people from escaping their homes, resulting in death as parts of the burning thatch roof falls on them. There are many news reports in developing countries of neighbors responding to screams but being unable to rescue their friends due to the intensity of the lightning ignited fire. See our published report about keraunoparalysis and the injuries that result (Villamil et al in Publications).

Zambia countryside, courtesy Mary Ann Cooper
Typical rural homes in sub-Saharan Africa
  • Runyanya Primary School Head Teacher
    Runyanya Primary School Head Teacher

    "Following the horrible incident of 2011 when lightning killed 18 of our students, enrollment slipped from about 600 to around 400 because children were afraid to come to school. After ACLENet installed a lightning protection system, enrollment rose to above 800 pupils as families again feel safe sending their children to school.
    Thank you."

  • A lightning protection system was installed at Nkurungiro School in 2017 following many deaths from lightning in the community.
    The Head Teacher told us:
    - Our children are now studying very well without fear when it rains.
    - The community around is no longer fearing to take shelter at our school; in fact, if it rains they all want to take shelter there because our place has been known as safer place due to the lightning protection system ACLENet installed.

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