Kokotela, South Africa — Powering up is something most of us take for granted, but hundreds of millions of people across parts of Africa living without reliable access to electricity. An American company is working to change that, and their innovation is a contender for this year’s annual Earthshot Prize, an award handed out by Britain’s Prince William to highlight solutions to the climate crisis.  

Like most 12-year-olds, Dimakatso Ngcobo isn’t a fan of household chores. She wasn’t shy about telling CBS News so as she scrubbed an old pot, a few plastic plates and two old peanut butter jars that she and her mom use as cups. 

Last year, her mom couldn’t afford the rent at their home in Soweto, outside Johannesburg, so they were evicted. The mother and daughter walked to the community of Kokotela, a few miles further south, to buy a tiny dirt patch of land for $200. There, they put up a new one-room home made of metal sheeting.

Ngcobo told CBS News that while there’s no running water and no toilet, what she missed the most was electricity.

“It is a bit hard. We don’t have much. We don’t afford that much,” she said, adding on a more positive note: “At least the school nearby is OK, as I want to be a doctor one day.”

She was also grateful for her world getting just a little bit brighter recently, thanks to the U.S. company d.light, which was created by two co-founders who met at Stanford University’s school of design. The company has now connected more than 180 million people in 70 countries to a clean source of energy from solar power.

“We are very focused on making these products as affordable as possible, and the way we do that is by pay-as-you-go financing, where customers can pay 20 cents a day or 30 cents per day, similar to what they would spend on kerosene or diesel for the diesel generator,” said d.light co-founder Nedjip Tozun. “But instead of literally burning away that money, they can invest it into an asset that they are going to own that is going to deliver power for many years.”

D.light is one of the 15 finalists in the running for a 2024 Earthshot Prize. Winners will be chosen Wednesday in five categories: Protect and Restore Nature, Clean Our Air, Revive Our Oceans, Build a Waste-Free World and Fix our Climate. The winner in each category will be awarded 1 million U.K. pounds, or about $1.3 million, intended to help scale-up their respective projects.

William, the Prince of Wales and future British monarch, has said he took inspiration from President John F. Kennedy’s 1962 “Moonshot” challenge to land a man on the moon within 10 years when he created the Earthshot Prize four years ago with the ambition of finding and elevating innovative global climate solutions. The Earthshot initiative’s ambitious goal since it launched has been to repair the planet within 10 years.

The Earthshot award ceremony has come to the African continent for the first time this year, with Cape Town in South Africa playing host.

Delegates at the Earthshot awards in Cape Town told CBS News ahead of Tuesday’s U.S. national election that they’ve been disappointed that climate change didn’t emerge as a central theme in the presidential race, and they worry it could fall even further from the focus of U.S. policy conversation.

New Yorker Shantha Bloemen, CEO of Mobility for Africa, a start-up that provides green mobility services to rural women in Africa using custom-built electric tricycles and bespoke solar powered batteries, was nominated for an award this year but didn’t make the finalist list. She said she was still hoping to find partners in Cape Town this week to help her scale up her company’s operations.

“We need urgent action and strong political leadership to unlock the financing to combat this crisis,” she told CBS News. “There are many of us with proven solutions to mitigate the worst impact on those living on the front line of the crisis, but without strong U.S. political leadership, it will be difficult to unlock the finance needed to scale quickly to succeed. Time is not on our side.”

Prince William acknowledged the networking aspect of the prize initiative Tuesday at an event in Cape Town. Panel host Wanjira Mathia teased the British royal as he sat for a panel discussion, calling the prize “a large dating service to bring together climate innovators.”

“The prize is about visibility, but it’s also about scale,” he said. “What we hear a lot from innovators is, ‘I have a solution and no idea how to scale,’ and businesses and leaders who say, ‘I have money but don’t know where to put it.’ So, that’s where we created a launchpad, which is a dating service which matches the funder with the solution, and vice versa. And I think this collaboration is key — if you put all of this into one melting pot, then sparks will fly.”

“It’s wonderful to see those many brilliant minds and changemakers in a room,” he said, addressing the audience.

Back in Kokotela, south of Johannesburg, Muriel Nobela can now power her TV, radio and lights thanks to a d.light solar panel on her roof. The panel feeds electricity to an outside light and to a storage battery inside her home, and it all costs her just over $250, which she’s paying off in small monthly instalments.

Her neighbor Portia Msomi had always been forced to rely on gas to cook and candles for light in the evenings. Now, it’s just a flip of a switch.

“Aha!” said Portia, giggling as she hit her new d.light switch to illuminate her home. “You see, isn’t it wonderful!”

Tozun told CBS News it’s that kind of reaction that drives d.light’s work.

“The name of our company is d.light, and that is the emotion that gets us really excited to see in our customers,” he said, adding: “There are 2 billion people in the world who have unreliable electricity access, and about 750 million with no access to electricity at all, our goal is  to transform the lives of one billion people by 2030.” 

Portia takes a lot of pride in her new solar system. With a huge amount of effort she climbed onto a large trunk to stretch her hand onto her metal roof to grab her solar panel and clean it meticulously. She told CBS News it took her only four months to pay off the $150 cost of the system.

She pointed to various neighbors’ homes that had burned down in accidents involving paraffin and candle fires.

“We are safe now, and have light all the time,” she said.

Light and safety are important for young Dimakatso Ngcobo, too, but the 12-year-old told CBS News that being connected was one of the biggest benefits of clean power in her home. She can now indulge in her favorite activity: scrolling through TikTok and Instagram.

“And I love TV,” she added. “I really love cartoons.”

Her infectious laugh also helped to light up the room.

“I feel happy now,” she said. “We don’t have much, butI can watch TikTok and dream about my future.”

Sarah Carter

Sarah Carter is an award-winning CBS News producer based in Johannesburg, South Africa. She has been with CBS News since 1997, following freelance work for organizations including The New York Times, National Geographic, PBS Frontline and NPR.