In the red soils of Rwanda’s Bugesera District, where droughts pulse through the seasons and water scarcity is part of daily life, 17-year-old Niyubahwe Uwacu Annick is reimagining what it means to bring power to the off-grid. Her home, and her heart, are rooted in a landscape shaped by climate extremes. Yet instead of accepting energy scarcity as fate, she is building a future in which the air itself becomes a source of electricity.
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By Jacob Weissman
Annick describes herself simply as “a proud African and Rwandan girl passionate about climate innovation and youth empowerment.” But her work is anything but simple. As a student at the Rwanda Coding Academy, a government-backed special model school that offers intensive training in software engineering, embedded systems, and cybersecurity, Annick is grounded in technology even as she reaches skyward.
Growing up in rural Bugesera, Annick witnessed firsthand how climate change deepens inequities. During dry seasons, wells ran low or failed; solar panels, however promising, could falter during extended cloud cover or lack backup systems. Many rural schools and families live in energy limbo, unable to reliably power lights, fans, pumps, or devices. These constraints no longer sit as obstacles, but instead are the fuel for Annick’s imagination.
Her response? AirVolt: a project designed to harvest electricity from air humidity. Using a blend of graphene oxide and sensor modules running on Arduino, she is designing a small-scale prototype intended to simulate how moisture in ambient air could be converted into usable, off-grid power.
This concept isn’t purely speculative: in recent years, researchers have discovered that graphene oxide films, under certain humidity gradients, can generate electrical potentials through proton migration. In effect, water molecules absorbed across layers of graphene oxide (GO) can release protons, which then diffuse, creating a tiny current. Recent reviews on humidity-gradient power generators suggest that under the right conditions (e.g. relative humidity differences greater than ~30 %) measurable energy yields are feasible.
Annick’s innovation lies in adapting that theory toward local realities, like schoolrooms that lack solar panels, households that cannot reliably maintain battery systems, and communities that must stretch every resource. The AirVolt prototype will test different material configurations, sensor setups, and circuit management schemes to see whether a self-sustaining module can be viable under real-world rural conditions.
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For Annick, AirVolt is more than a technical experiment, but a mission as well.
“African youth don’t have to wait to be saved. We can be the ones building solutions for our own people,” she said.
That belief extends beyond her lab bench. She leads Girls in Tech & Green, a youth-driven initiative in rural Rwanda that blends climate education, basic coding workshops, and sustainability activities. Young girls and women in villages learn Arduino, environmental science, and community action. The program also provides essential sanitary materials, helping reduce dropout rates and stigma around menstruation. The initiative also supports girls with essential hygiene resources, helping them stay in school and feel empowered in education. Through this dual focus, tech + wellbeing, Annick is helping build a generation who sees neither gender nor geography as a barrier to climate innovation.
Her leadership also connects with the community, mainly through environmental activism and technology. Annick serves as President of the National Children’s Council in her district, mobilizing youth to engage with climate action, education, and innovation at local levels. She uses that platform to amplify voices, bridge community needs and technical possibility, and push for youth representation in climate dialogues.
The challenges are immense. Moisture-based electricity generation is still emerging science; realizing enough voltage, managing leakage, scaling for real demand, ensuring durability all are open engineering questions. But Annick has the courage to prototype under constraint, to iterate in situ, and to frame failure as data rather than shame.
Moreover, her work is nested in Rwanda’s broader vision: RCA is expanding, with plans to open a university extension focused on technology and innovation for its graduates, a sign of growing institutional support for young problem-solvers. Annick’s efforts have also gained recognition beyond Rwanda through her connection with Young Planet Leaders (YPL), where she recently received a Changemaker Quarterly Scholarship Award. The acknowledgment reflects how her local innovations resonate with a broader global movement of young people using technology and creativity to advance sustainability from the ground up.
Annick’s narrative resonates because it shifts the framing: instead of seeing Africa as a place needing foreign rescue, it reclaims agency. It insists that climate justice and clean energy must be anchored in the lived experience of those most impacted. It dares to ask: what if the very air we breathe could power a school’s lights, a student’s laptop, a family’s water pump?
She is far from finished. In the coming months, she plans field trials in nearby villages, modular iterations of her AirVolt units, and pilot installations in small homes or classrooms. She is seeking collaborators, mentors, material support, and networks to scale responsibly. She welcomes conversations with researchers, funders, and media who see in her work not just a curiosity but a spark of possibility for decentralized, youth-powered climate resilience.
Annick is not waiting for someone to save her region. She is building the circuits, teaching the next generation, and reimagining what clean energy can look like. In her vision, the solution does not arrive from afar, but from the same air her people breathe.
Featured image: Niyubahwe Uwacu Annick.
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About the author: Jacob Weissman is the Program Specialist at Young Planet Leaders (YPL), a global nonprofit empowering youth changemakers through mentorship, scholarships, and training. He designs programs and partnerships that support young leaders driving sustainability, education equity, and climate justice. Currently completing a master’s in Global Studies at Humboldt University in Berlin, Jacob brings experience as a writer, musician, and former organizer with the Public Higher Education Network of Massachusetts, united by his passion for building a more just and sustainable world.
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