Malawi's solar power revolution starts by bringing schoolchildren out of the dark

Lamps provided by a Guardian-reader supported fund are brightening prospects for teachers as well as pupils in country where 90% of people live off-grid

Young Kennedy is astonished. His face lights up in the single room in the straw-thatched house. So does the book he is reading with his friend, Nellie.

The two excited nine-year-olds from the village of Gumbi in western Malawi have just done what about 600 million others in sub-Saharan Africa have never been able to do - switch on an electric light in their homes to read a book in the dark.