About

PEER Africa Western Cape, CC was founded in 1995 by Lilia Abron, Ph.D., PE, BCEE, Douglas “Mothusi” Guy, MBA, and Thami Eiland, our South African community partner. PEER Africa is a design-build firm specializing in upgrading and transforming informal communities to resilient, sustainable formal communities. In addition, PEER Africa delivers basic municipal services appropriately and empowers previously disenfranchised individuals to take charge of and improve their lives in a manner that promotes democracy, enrichment, economic soundness and growth for all. Over the past two decades, PEER Africa has established innovative “best practice solutions” for environmentally sound and sustainable projects in the built environment that contribute to the eradication of poverty, and promote and enhance local economic development in the very poor to destitute communities in South Africa.

Mission

Provide integrated environment, economic, empowerment, cost-optimized solutions for a sustainable, built environment. Our emphasis is on empowering poor communities in Africa and the developing world to take charge and control of their livelihoods in a responsible manner.

Guiding Principle

It is now as easy to build an energy-efficient, low-carbon footprint, resilient, affordable community, as it is to build a "slum”. It is now as affordable to capacitate those populations in those communities to take charge of their lives by training them to enter the workforce to contribute to the growth of their communities and country, as it is to import trained workers.

Awards & Recognition

  • 2012: recipient of AAEE (American Academy of Environmental Engineers) Superior Achievement Award for the Witsand iEEECO™ Sustainable Community in Cape Town, Republic

  • 2009: Selected as a Flagship Project by South African Department of Energy and showcased at UNFCCC COP 17, Durban, Republic of South Africa

  • 2009: Recipient of Eskom eta Award for Excellence in Energy Efficiency in Human Settlements, Residential Sector, Witsand Sustainable Human Settlement

  • Honored by UNFCCC, COP4, for having a best practice paradigm in affordable, energy-efficient housing in the world

  • 2003 - 2008: PEER Africa and PEER Consultants, managed a pilot Green Loan program of $1,000,000 USD funded by the Global Environmental Facility and the International Finance Cooperation in South Africa for the purposes of on-lending that pool of money to increase the participation of small, medium, and micro previously disenfranchised businesses in the “green” marketplace.

Please visit http://peerafrica.com/ for more detailed information about our sister organization.