News and Updates

News

In 2015, all United Nation Member States pledged to end poverty and protect the planet by 2030, through a coordinated universal agenda that involved the 17 Sustainable Development goals (SDGs). Before the global COVID-19 pandemic hit, the estimated annual financing gap for meeting this agenda in developing countries alone amounted to $2.5 trillion. And, according to OECD Global Outlook 2021, this funding gap may have increased by another 70% driven by the necessity to divert financing to meet COVID-19 emergency response needs. This widening of the financing gap has highlighted the need to diversify finance flows and that by relying on public resources alone we risk failing to achieve SDG targets. There is an urgent need to attract private capital into the relatively young companies and emerging business models needed to deliver a just transition by de-risking their inflows.

Over the past two years, PREO(Powering Renewable Energy Opportunities) has demonstrated a blended financing approach in which donor capital is used to buy-down the demonstration risk associated with early-stage business models, thus lowering the investment risk and improving the risk-return profile for incoming private capital investors.

PREO is a €20 million progamme co-funded by the IKEA Foundation and UK aid via the Transforming Energy Access platform, that deploys high-risk catalytic grant capital – along with technical assistance, knowledge management, data platforms and strategic engagement advisory services – to demonstrate the viability of productive use of energy (PUE) business models in sub-Saharan Africa.

PREO has successfully used blended finance to support innovative PUE enterprises which were struggling to raise finance during their business model demonstration phase. The innovators are able to direct the PREO grant funding to cover the CAPEX of initial field units, cover operational expenses, build capacities, design information systems and generally to absorb unit-level losses to ensure financial sustainability. As a result, the innovators successfully demonstrate positive unit- economics, refine and improve the business model, and gather critical business data needed back up the business plan and attract sufficient commercial capital that would otherwise materialise far more slowly.

One of the companies that successfully went through this process is SokoFresh, a business built on the belief  that the barriers to providing accessible cold storage to smallholder farmers are not down to technology, but down to the business model. SokoFresh built a market-linkage service layer over and above the cold storage service, transporting the produce to markets and selling it through pre-agreed contracts to buyers on behalf of smallholder farmers. When SokoFresh applied for PREO funding and support in 2019, the company was just out of the concept phase and had identified the technology partners, value chains and the regions. PREO helped SokoFresh to procure the cold storage technology, build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for its market-linkage platform, and get the concept from paper to reality. SokoFresh onboarded around 1,500 smallholders, traded more than 110 tonnes of produce, demonstrated reduction of post-harvest losses to less than 2% vs a 30% baseline, and collected critical unit economics data.

The evidence and data collected through the PREO project, enabled SokoFresh, to raise €892,676 in scale-up capital from both performance-based and private sources, generating a leverage of 5.2x on the PREO funding.

Overall, of the 12 enterprises (two of which are non-profits) that PREO supported in 2019-20 period, seven have successfully raised scale-up capital amounting to €15.6m, generating an average leverage of 7x on the €2.26 million disbursed in the form of grants.

Another big step for the 2020 cohort was in e-mobility, where PREO supported OPIBUS and MobilePower. In November 2021, OPIBUS, the largest manufacturer of electric vehicles in East Africa, raised growth capital through a $7.5 million round, which at the time was the largest fundraise ever in e-mobility in sub-Saharan Africa. Today, OPIBUS is developing products in three main sectors – electric motorcycles, electric commercial vehicles and charging solutions –, and PREO played an instrumental role in rolling out its first batch of 150 e-motorcycles. OPIBUS used PREO grants to get the e-motorcycles to the market as quickly as they could, test the user perspective of the product, build local supply chain ecosystem, invest in product design, and improve manufacturing capacities. During the project period staff headcount grew from 37 to 90 with 91% of Kenyan employees and 40% women.

Within the e-mobility sector, companies supported by PREO adopted a variety of promising business models, to achieve shared goals of improving health and reducing emissions. While OPIBUS aims to become the largest manufacturer of e-vehicles in Africa, Mobile Power, is building a battery management platform that it could lease out to e-mobility companies.

With funding from PREO, Mobile Power developed a multi-purpose 1kWh battery called the MOPOMAX and successfully demonstrated its e-mobility use case in Sierra Leone by rolling out 17 e-motorcycles powered by solar in off-grid and weak-grid areas. In addition to e-mobility, MOPOMAX is gaining traction in use cases such as diesel generator replacement, energy access, and powering productive use equipment. Data gathered from the PREO project has helped Mobile Power mobilise €5.5 million in growth capital including a £1.9 million in Series A funding lead by Camco REPP and RBF from Beyond the Grid Fund for Africa (BGFA).

In addition to supporting early-stage enterprises, PREO, also supported more established businesses that sought financing for demonstration of new business models.

Simusolar, a Tanzania based distributor of irrigation equipment that had already sold more than 600 solar water pumps, wanted to demonstrate a business model that can catalyse the pace of customer acquisition by partnering with established players in agricultural value chains. The idea involved using a cooperative’s hubs as demonstration sites for solar water pumps and giving the hub’s staff the tools needed to convert coop members to customers. Though Simusolar faced initial challenges in the coffee value chain, it successfully set up its operations in Uganda and sold 186 solar pumps by replicating the model in horticulture, livestock, and dairy value chains. Demonstrating its ability to work with agricultural value chain partners and its capacity to scale up operations in a new market proved critical to Simusolar in raising $ 1.5 million in debt from ElectriFI.

PREO also supported InspiraFarms, a cold storage market leader with operational track record in central packhouses to rollout and demonstrate a first-mile mobile pre-cooler unit. The technology uses forced air pre-cooling to rapidly reduce the field heat in the produce, intervening immediately post-harvest, when the quality of produce drops disproportionately with time. Through the PREO project, InspiraFarms demonstrated to exporters that the use of its mobile pre-coolers can lead to a 16% increase in monthly earnings and for investors that the unit-level payback can be less than five years.

In addition to successfully blending private capital with donor capital over different transactions across different timelines, PREO is also seeing an encouraging trend in which public capital funded projects are positively influencing private capital investment decisions.

In 2021, PREO funded Koolboks, a manufacturer of solar-powered freezers equipped with PAYG technology. Having started in 2020, Koolboks quickly expanded to 14 countries and sold more than 1,000 units but did not have a B2C sales model. Initial attempts to partner with a financial institution in Nigeria to finance the end consumers faced challenges due to lack of sufficient credit history among borrowers and the lengthy approval process. With PREO funding, Koolboks directly validated the product market fit for the B2C segment, developed a customer acquisition strategy, and started financing the sale of units from its own balance sheet. In the short span of nine months, Koolboks sold 219 units through a B2C sales channel in Nigeria and achieved a consistent on-time repayment rate of 97%. This better-than-expected pilot performance along with the demand intensity experienced among the pilot customers during the field visit encouraged private investors to catalyse their investment decision in the recently concluded $2.15 million Series A round in Koolboks. In addition, the private capital providers who were initially drawn by the B2B model have become supportive of the B2C model developed through PREO, even committing to meet follow-on financing needs and acknowledging B2C as the key growth driver for their investment.

PREO, in addition to using grants, has also deployed Technical Assistance (in-kind) across its portfolio and other companies to address knowledge gaps, to improve the business viability of the companies, and enhance potential investment performance for private investors.

By using catalytic grants and technical assistance as its instruments, PREO has attracted €20.6 million in scale-up capital primarily from commercial investors (on top of the €10m that the grantees contributed to the project demonstrations) into bankable projects that were otherwise considered too risky. In doing so, PREO has demonstrated how public capital can be deployed to attract commercial capital and how the blending can happen over different transactions, while extending the reach and effectiveness of the co-finding by the IKEA foundation and UK aid via the Transforming Energy Access platform.

News

The digital finance solutions agency 4R Digital is set to receive €198,000 funding from PREO, the Powering Renewable Energy Opportunities programme, for a partnership project with water equipment supplier Davis & Shirtliff. The project seeks to address the need for high quality, affordable solar water pumps and irrigation kits amongst small-scale producers in Kenya.

Davis & Shirtliff are well-established suppliers of solar irrigation equipment in sub-Saharan Africa, but have so far struggled to penetrate the potentially huge market of smallholder farmers. In Kenya, smallholder farmers produce the majority of the food supply, but most rely on increasingly unpredictable rainfall for irrigation. However, formal finance providers have long been averse to extending credit to smallholder farmers because they are perceived as high risk. Without tailored financing, most smallholder farmers are unable to access the solar irrigation that could almost double their daily income.

To address this challenge, 4R Digital is partnering with Davis & Shirtliff to adapt their business model to bring solar irrigation solutions within reach of smallholder farmers. Specialists in developing digital micropayment solutions that enable credit sales, 4R Digital will build a payment platform that offers credit for solar irrigation equipment on flexible and affordable terms appropriate to smallholder farmers.

During the initial phase, the project will support up to 35,000 farmers in Kenya to replace unsustainable and inefficient hand, petrol and diesel pumps with modern smart solar water pumping systems. Davis & Shirtliff has a pre-existing range of solar pumping kits, the Sunflo Solar Pumping Systems, consisting of panels, a controller and a pump. The digital payment and monitoring platform designed by 4R Digital will be incorporated into the pump controller providing a payment facility. By tailoring payments to the agricultural or income cycles of the individual farmers, the initial phase will develop and test different plans to reach an understanding of the farmers’ ability to repay loans and the extent to which seasonality and harvesting affects the payments.

Funding from PREO will enable the development and trialling of a digital PAYG platform suitable for the sale of solar water pumps and irrigation equipment to smallholder farmers. Ultimately, the partners hope this project will lay the groundwork for launching a commercially sustainable new water management company called New Water Management Company (NWMC) that can provide asset financing and solar water pumps to smallholder farmers more widely across the region.

4R Digital is the second Partnership Services project to receive PREO funding in order to maximise its potential. PREO is co-funded by the IKEA Foundation and UK aid via the Transforming Energy Access platform. The Partnership Services initiative aims to build, fund and support three corporate organisations for the purpose of developing mutually beneficial partnerships in their sub-Saharan African value chains. Their productive use of energy will bring with it social and economic benefits such as improved earnings potential, job creation, empowerment of female rural workers, localisation of value-chains, as well as more profitable and reliable supply chains for these corporate actors. PREO has allocated a total of €580,000 for funding Partnership Services projects.

Read more about 4R Digital: www.4rdigital.com

Read more about David & Shirtliff: www.davisandshirtliff.com

News

As the world reflects the key outcomes of COP26, Jon Lane, Associate Director at the Carbon Trust looks back on his time at COP representing the PREO programme and shares his reflections on the major events and announcements relating to energy access. 

Author: Jon Lane

COP26 was my first experience of attending COP in person, a milestone made even more significant with COP being held in Glasgow – a major city my home nation.

In the lead up there was a question mark against whether it was going to happen at all as a lot has happened since COP25. The reality of climate change and it impacts have become more evident with every news bulletin and the world has experienced and still is experiencing the effects of a global pandemic that has had far-reaching consequences in every part of the world.

This included postponement of COP26 to this year – and in the run up many views on whether people would be able to meet in person or if it would need to be fully virtual.

The final decision was to take a hybrid approach, which not only meant face to face interaction was possible but that events would be live streamed presenting an enormous opportunity to take COP to a much broader audience.

COP26 was also the first to give the topic of energy access a seat at the table as numerous heads of state called for a ‘fair and just transition’ as the reality dawns that reducing emissions is not enough, and we also need to ensure that we build back in a more resilient way that enables us to adapt to the changing environment while creating economic development that is equitable. Ensuring that clean energy is accessible to all is one element of this, but beyond providing access to clean energy we also have an opportunity to generate incomes and build prosperity in communities, particularly those who face the biggest impacts of climate change.

SEforAll in partnership with the newly formed Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet, which launched at COP26 to accelerate investment in green energy transitions and renewable power solutions in developing and emerging economies, co-hosted the SDG7 (Sustainable Development Goal 7) Pavilion.

The Pavilion was in the main UN accredited (United Nations) zone (known as the Blue Zone) and provided a hub for hosting events entirely dedicated to energy access. During Week One that I attended COP26, the SDG 7 Pavillion hosted over 40 events and welcomed nearly 200 global leaders.  

The blend of in person events and virtual streaming meant the sessions I participated in at the SDG7 Pavilion onbehalf of PREO and the Transforming Energy Access (TEA) platform, that funds PREO alongside Ikea Foundation, as well as many others of interest in energy access are available to access at the SEforALL website.

Register here to access the virtual platform and watch the full sessions.

On Tuesday 2^nd November, we hosted a session on the importance of productive use of energy (PUE) which focused on the work of PREO, presented alongside Leslie Labruto from Acumen who shared details of the work they are doing on productive use. This was an opportunity to touch on insights from two new reports from the PREO programme (read the reports here) reflecting the investment opportunity and the business case for investing in PUE, highlighting the results to date of PREO funded projects. During this session we were also able to showcase the video case study for Opibus, an e-mobility company funded through PREO, you can watch their story here.

Energy Day, on 4^th November, also brought a hugely significant announcement for energy access as Kwasi Kwarteng, a minister in the UK government, announced £126 million for scaling up the Transforming Energy Access (TEA) platform. This investment marks a statement of intent in helping to realise a just and inclusive global clean energy transition, reaching millions more people with improved access to clean energy by 2026.

I also had the pleasure of representing TEA and PREO in a session with the Energy Saving Trust exploring how solar-powered technologies can help empower people and protect the planet, on the panel alongside Vimbai Chapungu from the MECS programme and Souryadeep Basak, a PhD student from TERI School of Advanced Studies and participant in the Efficiency for Access Design Challenge 2020 – 2021.

My day closed with a session on behalf of the University of Cape Town focusing on skills titled ‘Boosting economic empowerment by building local skills and expertise in clean energy’, This was an extremely rewarding session as we heard voices from students, academics and employers supported by the TEA platform.

Having the opportunity to attend COP26, to share the work of PREO and results achieved to date was an incredible experience, and it was hugely motivating to sense the interest and momentum gathering around energy access and PUE, and the potential to drive progress towards the shared goal of an inclusive global energy transition. It is clear going forward we need to keep the momentum created in Glasgow going. As the global pandemic has taught us, we can work together and innovate how approach challenges when faced with an existential crisis.

News

New analysis reveals $1.2 trillion investment opportunity over the next 10 years can be realised by building productive market demand for off-grid renewable energy in sub-Saharan Africa.

Africa needs energy for development and the socio-economic transformation of hundreds of millions of people. Increasing the productive use of energy (PUE) is an important way to unlock jobs, create incomes and deliver social impacts in local communities. Two reports released today by the Powering Renewable Energy Opportunities (PREO) Programme outline the business case for investment into productive equipment and appliances and the scale of the investment opportunity that exists.

PREO is funded by the IKEA Foundation and UK aid, via the Transforming Energy Access platform and delivered by the Carbon Trust and Energy 4 Impact. The programme enables African businesses to harness clean energy to improve incomes, build climate resilience and reduce reliance on fossil fuels. To date it has funded 23 private sector and non-profit enterprises that demonstrate the business and impact case of PUE in multiple sectors. PUE refers to the type of energy demand that generates revenue, increases productivity, enhances diversity, and creates economic value.

The PUE market opportunity in sub-Saharan Africa is significant. The Capital Required to Maximise the Productive Use of Energy in Sub-Saharan Africa report details new analysis that estimates $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years (or $120 billion per year) is required to ensure the necessary level of productive and revenue generating demand is created to improve the economics of off-grid renewable energy. This is significantly larger than the estimated $40 billion required annually to achieve global universal energy access on the same timeline, the report says.

The business case for investment is backed by results as PREO releases the first impacts from the projects being supported via the programme. The Power of the Productive Use of Energy – an Impact Investment Frontier; details outcomes from six pilot projects (in e-mobility and transport, cooling for food and healthcare).

PREO funding has enabled the businesses it supports in sub-Saharan Africa to demonstrate business model viability while gathering critical business information and securing commercial scale-up capital. Each of the projects uses PUE appliances or equipment to create business opportunities and grow local economies, while providing essential services in agriculture, e-mobility transport, and healthcare.

In e-mobility, PREO has demonstrated viable payback for investment over a little more than two years through a daily leasing model of e-motorbikes. Moreover, the projects have created jobs, created opportunities for women, boosted local production capacity, and created supply chain opportunities. Emissions associated with the use of fossil fuels in conventional internal combustion engine motorbikes have also been avoided while running and service costs have come down by 68% and 33% respectively.

Cooling for food companies supported through PREO have shown that off-grid cold storage directly aggregates smallholder farmers and achieves breakeven at a 72% utilisation rate. The cooling units reduce agricultural waste by a third, and client farmers typically pocket 20% more for their produce when using the service. Over six months, client farmers sold 2 550kg more produce, resulting in $11 460 additional income.

In primary healthcare, companies supported by PREO show that by adopting solar, facility downtime can be minimised by as much as 40%, and revenues improved by up to 20% through serving more patients and introducing electricity-powered medical devices and other healthcare services. Investment will attract capital for more off-grid implementation and is a model that may be applied elsewhere.

“Stimulating greater demand for renewable energy and boosting investment in productive use equipment and applications is a critical way to support business opportunities, grow local economies and create jobs in sub-Saharan Africa,” Jon Lane, Associate Director at the Carbon Trust says. “However, traditional forms of investment in energy access often fall short of bridging the gap between the high cost of supplying renewable energy to off-grid communities and building consistent and reliable demand from businesses or households. We hope the release of these reports not only highlights the scale of the investment opportunity available, but also confirms the economics and social benefits that can be delivered.”

PREO is funded by the IKEA Foundation and UK aid via the Transforming Energy Access platform, and delivered by the Carbon Trust and Energy 4 Impact.

Please click on these links to watch short videos about three PREO pilot projects: Opibus, SokoFresh and Access Afya.

News

The Powering Renewable Energy Opportunities (PREO) programme is delighted to announce it will be funding Heifer International, a development organisation working to end hunger and poverty around the world by providing livestock and advice to struggling families. PREO has awarded €141,000 to Heifer International to implement solar-powered rural milk chilling solutions at 5 producer organisations (dairy cooperatives) in Uganda, in order to demonstrate the benefits of the productive use of energy (PUE) for dairy cooperatives.

The dairy sector is one of the fastest growing agricultural sub-sectors in Africa and it has the potential to provide a regular source of income to millions of low-income rural households. Yet, the African continent contributes to less than 8% of the global milk output and to just 0.2% of the global trade in dairy products (according to FAO statistics from 2020). Despite a sizable cattle population, many African countries rely on dairy imports to satisfy domestic needs. While challenges such as poor herd management, sub-standard feed availability and the small-scale of operations contribute to poor productivity, the lack of rural chilling infrastructure, resulting in high post-harvest losses (of as high as 40%), is seen as the main barrier to sectoral growth.

With PREO funding, Heifer International’s project – Solar for Sustainable Income in Dairy (SSID), will bring together solar companies, impact investors, capacity builders, project financiers, and dairy cooperatives and processors to demonstrate the impact of the productive use energy (PUE) in the dairy sector by introducing solar-powered milk chilling at 5 dairy producer organisations in Uganda. The two-year project, which will be implemented in the Kiboga, Kyankwanzi and other districts of the central and southwestern Ugandan milk shed, is expected to increase both procured, bulked, chilled and sold milk. As such, it will help boost the incomes of the dairy farmers within the 5 cooperatives. The project’s targeted outcome is to increase the capacity utilisation of the dairy processor by making solar chilling technologies available and affordable for dairy cooperatives, thereby  reducing post-harvest losses in dairy value chains. The project is also expected to reduce the energy costs for dairy cooperatives by limiting the usage of diesel and embracing renewable energy, which will also result in a reduction in their carbon footprint.

This PREO-funded project will involve JESA dairy, one of Uganda’s largest premium dairy products producers. Project implementation will be led and managed by Heifer Project International, who have a proven track record of success in Uganda, having established more than 79 dairy cooperatives in the last 12 years. Shared Wealth Ventures, the impact capital arm of Heifer Project International, is the financing partner and will enable reliable chilling to the dairy cooperatives through innovative financing structures such as Power Purchase Agreement and asset leasing.

Heifer International – Solar for Sustainable Income in Dairy is the first Partnership Services project to receive PREO funding, to maximise its high-potential. The PREO funding is co-funded by the IKEA Foundation and UK Aid via the Transforming Energy Access platform. The Partnership Services initiative aims to build, fund and support three corporate organisations for the purpose of developing mutually beneficial partnerships in their sub-Saharan African value chains. Their productive use of energy will bring with is social and economic benefits such as improved earnings potential, job creation, empowerment of female rural workers, localisation of value-chains as well as more profitable and reliable supply chains for these corporate actors. PREO has allocated a total of €580,000 for funding Partnership Services projects, anticipating funding approximately three projects to the value of €190,000 each.

Read more about Heifer International

News

According to the Rural Energy Agency (REA), more than 17,000 schools in Tanzania do not have access to energy – impacting enrolment, lesson quality, access to educational resources and teacher retention. Such detrimental effects on formal education only exacerbate the widespread problem of child illiteracy.

With funding from PREO, solar system distributors Trend Solar is tackling this issue by pioneering a solar home system packaged with user-friendly smartphones and an affordable data-bundle for low-income rural families. Free educational content from Ubongo is accessed by children via a smartphone app which helps further child literacy progress in off-grid regions. Ubongo creates and distributes locally relevant educational programs to help improve early numeracy, literacy, gender equality and digital inclusivity amongst school-age children.

The coronavirus pandemic has adversely affected school attendance – so it is no surprise that Trend Solar is witnessing heightened interest in remote home-based learning amidst periodic school closures. Despite the difficult social and economic context created by the pandemic, the project has reached more than 150 households in Tanzania but faced challenges when trying to onboard existing and new customers to adopt a new, free of charge, educational smartphone app designed for off-grid kids. PREO has interviewed Trend Solar’s COO Joe Segal to find out more.

1. What were the initial strategies used to acquire customers?

Initially, we recruited our customers to the Ubongo programme through a series of bulk SMS which sent them the Google Play Store link to download the app. Additional follow up would be completed by phone calls to help walk customers through the process if challenges were faced.

2. What were the challenges faced by the project in acquiring customers and why were the initially planned strategies not as productive as expected?

Many customers did not have an adequate level of digital literacy to download the apps without being walked through the process by a customer services representative. We also found many customers did not understand the messages sent and some of those that did understand the message still needed further support to access the Ubongo app. Finally, while we were trying to provide data bundles for the customers, the cost of data increased in price by several times.

3. What alternative and revised customer acquisition strategies were used to achieve customer acquisition targets? How did the project overcome the barrier of limited digital and smartphone literacy?

Realising the need for us to complete installations in person, we arranged two local workshops to which we invited our customers through both text messages and phone calls in order to make sure the opportunity was properly understood. While 80 customers indicated their interest to attend, less than 30 arrived at the events.

After this setback, we decided to complete the app installations by recruiting agents to set up more local workshops and conduct homes visits. This was a costly, time-consuming and inefficient solution, but it was identified as a necessary step in order to provide customers with the necessary skillsets for using the Ubongo app. PREO was supportive during this phase of the project and helped us recruit a project coordinator with excellent experience of our sector, our customer demographic to help us navigate some of these challenges with the Trend Solar engineers and customers on the ground.

3. What are your recommendations to similar projects in a comparable context towards gaining customer acceptance and adoption?

For future projects, installation at the point of sale or education during initial interactions with sale agents would be a more productive approach. Additionally, despite the low turnout for our first workshop, driving greater attendance at regular workshops would still deliver a quicker rate of onboarding with around twenty installations a week, resulting in a more productive use of staff time compared to travelling to individual households.

5. What is the scaleup strategy for Trend Solar in improving customer stickiness through partnership with app tech companies?

Trend Solar believes in partnering with a range of app developers to create a more attractive experience for the Trend smartphone. With apps tailored for the needs of rural customers, through providers working on AgriTech, HealthTech, E-Commerce and EduTech solutions, our customers will realise wider financial benefits from owning a smartphone. This will in turn elevate the importance of the system in their household economies and they will therefore prioritise payment for the product ahead of other expenses.

6. What lessons from the PREO project can be used in the scaleup strategy?

One of the key elements of the PREO project was to understand what barriers arise when introducing apps to our off-grid customers. Two key barriers have surfaced and need to be resolved in order to scaleup:

1. Digital Skills - the low levels of digital literacy have meant that downloads of the apps had to be done in person by our technicians. This ‘in person’ and ‘one-to-one’ dependency needs to be removed and replaced with a ‘one-to-many’ solution. The 2 possibilities we’re exploring for our scaleup strategy include pre-installation of apps at the point of manufacture and remote installation techniques to be developed. However, this solution is still problematic when considering the next point.
2. Phone Storage - to keep smartphones affordable for the project demographic we are limited in regard to the amount of pre-installed storage. This in conjunction with limited digital skills means that users do not know how to delete large obsolete files from their phones (such as old WhatsApp videos and other unused apps). This means that on many occasions, phones did not have capacity to download our new apps, which again requires one-to-one support from our technicians to free up storage space. Again, the solution we see as most easy to implement is to install apps at the point of manufacture or sale.

7. What economic return will accrue to Trend Solar if the partnerships with app platforms from different sectors can be scaled successfully.

The economic return we would anticipate through partnerships with app platforms are:

1. Partnership sales: new revenue streams driven through partnership affiliate deals.
2. Product stickiness: improved customer experience through additional value-added services which in turn support customer retention and repayment propensity.
3. Attracting new sales: the unique selling point of a suite of productive use applications being a differentiator from other solar home system providers and a demand for this type of service increasing sales.

Read more about Trend Solar

News

Mobile Power operates a network of solar-powered battery-charging stations called ‘MOPO Hubs’ across Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Uganda, Zambia, The Gambia and Liberia. Its battery rental system is both affordable and flexible. For Customers, renting a MOPO⁵⁰ Battery creates a significant saving compared to charging phones on generators, requires no deposit, credit check or fixed payment structure. To date, Mobile Power has provided power to over 100,000 people.

With support from PREO, Mobile Power is now launching Battery swap stations for electric motorbikes in Sierra Leone. The e-motorbikes are rented on a daily basis to drivers of motorcycle taxis known locally as okadas, with MOPO Batteries charged via solar mini-grids. This model deploys the new 1kWh MOPO^Max Battery which has been designed to facilitate both productive use and e-mobility solutions. The MOPO^MaxBattery will also be incorporated and charged through Mobile Power’s country-wide network of MOPO Hubs.

The PREO project targets were straightforward: to assess the product-market fit for the e-motorbikes and battery swap system and thereafter to demonstrate that this clean energy powered e-mobility solution can be a viable generator of profit for the rider, the solar mini-grids partners and for Mobile Power itself.

Early evidence obtained from testing the prototype was encouraging: the e-motorbike operated as part of the pilot has covered thousands of miles on rural and urban roads and it has proved popular with riders and customers alike; given the high prices of fuel, the unit economics for the rider were vastly improved when compared to petrol motorbikes; the data shows that the e-motorbikes can improve the daily profits of the okada drivers by more than 100% to at least GBP 3 per day. Mobile Power has plans to scale its battery swap for e-mobility footprint in 2022.

Read more about Mobile Power

News

The Powering Renewable Energy Opportunities (PREO) programme, is delighted to announce that VOLT-TERRA Farm and Energy Solutions Ltd has been awarded €250,000 to provide cost-effective and reliable electricity to local communities, whilst simultaneously unlocking their economic potential in the process.

VOLT-TERRA is a joint venture between Gourmet Gardens (U) Ltd. and INENSUS GmbH. The partnership aims to increase the profitability of mini-grids in agricultural value chains in Uganda, by applying the cutting-edge KeyMaker Model(KMM). The KMM is based on utilising the mini-grid electricity to establish a local agro-processing project, the revenues of which are an additional income stream for the mini-grid operator. In addition, the project creates an end-market for the local farmers to sell their produce.

To do so, VOLT-TERRA supports the production of vanilla and bird’s eye chillies and will become the supply-chain manager of these local products for export to value-added markets.

The proposed location of the pilot phase of the project is in the sub-county Bbaale in central Uganda, which has a population of about 17,000 people and where the primary source of economic activity is agriculture and forestry. Farmers are restricted in growing crops, and often suffer from price exploitation, due to a lack of access to energy and high unemployment rates. Through the KMM, VOLT-TERRA is addressing these challenges by providing sustainable, reliable and affordable energy and agro-processing services to empower rural communities.

VOLT-TERRA is the latest project to receive grant funding to develop its high-potential project. In May 2021, nine other pioneering African businesses were awarded a total of €1.36m to pilot new approaches or expand their existing business models, which are set to stimulate clean energy uptake and, in doing so, improve livelihoods and reduce poverty.

Read more about VOLT-TERRA

PREO is a multi-million Euro productive use of energy (PUE) programme co-funded by the IKEA Foundation and UK aid, and delivered by Carbon Trust and Energy 4 Impact. PREO recognises that, while increased energy access is vital to improve livelihoods in rural Africa, this alone is not enough to transform economies. So PREO aims to boost demand for clean energy as a way of creating sustainable jobs, growing economies, reducing poverty and empowering women.

News

“Real breakthrough in boosting demand for renewable energy to create sustainable jobs and reduce poverty”

NINE PIONEERING AFRICAN BUSINESSES are set to markedly grow their positive impact on sub-Saharan Africa communities by stimulating clean energy uptake and, in doing so, growing local economies and empowering women.     

This is thanks to the innovation of the businesses themselves, and support provided through the latest round of PREO (Powering Renewable Energy Opportunities) grant funding.

PREO is a multi-million Euro productive use of energy (PUE) programme co-funded by the IKEA Foundation and UK aid, and delivered by Carbon Trust and Energy 4 Impact. PREO recognises that while increased energy access is vital to improve livelihoods in rural Africa, this alone is not enough to transform economies. So PREO aims to boost demand for clean energy as a way of creating sustainable jobs, growing economies, reducing poverty and empowering women.

In the next 24 months PREO will provide the nine businesses with €1.36m to pilot new approaches or expand their existing business models. Learnings will be widely shared to unlock PUE opportunities in the region.  

Says Jon Lane, Head of Energy Access at the Carbon Trust that manages PREO: “The projects demonstrate real breakthrough in boosting demand for renewable energy to create sustainable jobs and reduce poverty through economic growth. PREO funding will help accelerate the scale up of these business models, enabling them to do even more for socio-economic advancement locally.”

The nine successful businesses were selected from a pool of 233 applicants, indicating a strong and extremely encouraging trend toward clean energy use in the region, Jon Lane says. Previous PREO grants have been awarded to businesses active in sectors such as transport, health care and education. In this latest round most of the businesses are part of the agricultural value chain, so the PREO grants are assisting the sub-Saharan agriculture sector realise its full potential.

All grant recipients will undertake research to evaluate the overall socio-economic and environmental impacts of the funded projects, and best practice findings will be shared on the PREO knowledge hub.

The nine PREO grant recipients are:

FRESis setting up a solar powered agro-processing platform to power the Sowdjoma shea butter cooperative that serves hundreds of women farmers in Burkina Faso. The farmers will benefit from the fee-for-service energy supply, giving them access to sustainable energy to increase production efficiency, develop innovative agricultural practices and invest in equipment. Ownership of the agro-processing equipment will be transferred to the cooperative farmers via a rent-to-buy scheme.

ClearSky Power is boosting farmer livelihoods in Somaliland through innovative irrigation technology. A photovoltaic powered drip irrigation system will be available to local farmers through a lending scheme. The PREO funded pilot project will reveal how energy savings impact productivity, water use and crop diversification and provide useful insights for the successful roll-out of the business model to more farmers.

A Congolese coffee producer and distributor, Café Kivu is growing its operations by investing in clean energy and by empowering local entrepreneurs. Solar-hybrid bean roasting technology will boost production at Café Kivu. Distribution will be expanded through a franchise licensing and asset loan system, providing local entrepreneurs with mobile coffee carts that will take the brand into the heart of urban centres. In time, Café Kivu will grow its business into US, Middle East, and Asian markets.  

KOOLBOKS is pioneering a sustainable cold storage model that enhances the resilience of female fish traders in the coastal city of Lagos, Nigeria. The system provides off-grid solar refrigerators (together with LED lighting and USB ports) that are made available through microcredit loans and pay-as-you-go financing. It’s a clean alternative to diesel generators and ice blocks. Koolboks also reduces spoilage and improves profitability.

Solar home system distributor PEG Africa is partnering with water pump manufacturers to distribute solar pumps to Senagalese vegetable, millet and groundnut farmers at a pay as you go price point. With PREO grant support, PEG will grow its supply chain, distribution and after sales network and so give the farmers clean, accessible technology for optimal productivity.

Bodawerk is piloting Agr E-Hub, a new generation energy system that powers new mechanisation opportunities for Ugandan farmers, who continue to rely on manual labour due to the unaffordability of agricultural machinery. Agr E-Hub is a low-cost, multi-purpose tractor, powered by Li-ion battery packs charged through a mini-grid and made available via a pay as you go scheme. This system will spread the mechanisation of tilling, ploughing, threshing, milling and transporting. It will boost both yield and crop value and will offer fresh development prospects for farmers.

Off-grid electrification project REPARLE (Renewable Energy Powering Agriculture and Rural Livelihood Enhancement) will sustainably scale the circular economy model in refugee and host smallholder farming communities in northern Uganda. The company will buy agricultural waste (that’s usually burned) and turn it into clean cooking fuel and displace carbon-based fuels that degrade the environment and harm health. It will also support farming agri-processing activities by providing mini-grid connections, electric vehicles for transporting goods and advanced crop management techniques.

Practical Action Consulting will empower women smallholder farmers in rural northern Malawi by developing a sustainable, vertically-integrated business model for their crops. In partnership with African Mini-Grids (AMG) and Modern Farming Technologies (MFT), this pilot programme will upskill women farmers by providing a solar drip irrigation system for greenhouses and for solar refrigeration. It will also facilitate sales to boost income from farming.

Uganda-based Zembo Motorcycles is planning to demonstrate the technical and financial viability of battery swap solar stations for electric motorcycles (e-motorcycles). Right now, Zembo has six stations in Kampala that service 40 e-motorcycles. The intention is to grow into remote and peri-urban rural areas. Extending its network by 120km along the Masaka Road, Zembo will provide the first corridor of solar-powered, off-grid battery recharging stations in Africa.

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News

PREO funding applications give insight into productive use of energy trends in sub-Saharan Africa

The Powering Renewable Energy Opportunities (PREO) programme has received a healthy response to its call for Action Learning Projects and Innovative Supply-chain Based Partnerships funding proposals.

PREO is supported by the IKEA Foundation and UK aid, and delivered by the Carbon Trust and Energy 4 Impact. The programme aims to boost productive electricity demand in off-grid areas of sub-Saharan Africa as a route to economic growth and job creation. Data collected from the applications provides an interesting snapshot of trends in the renewable energy market across the region.

Most notably, an overwhelming majority are seeking funding for solar energy sources (88%), powered by either stand-alone systems (64%) or mini-grids (27%). For businesses reliant on small to medium appliances, such larger power systems enable a higher consumption of energy, which is key to transforming rural economies.

Modern healthcare has also become increasingly vital during the COVID-19 pandemic so it is perhaps unsurprising that health (13%) is the third largest cluster within the pool of applicants. Whilst there is a geographical spread of applications across 29 countries, the appetite for productive use of energy in off-grid areas appears strongest in Nigeria (22%), Kenya (19%) and Uganda (10%). A majority of proposals are from applicants at the start-up stage (60%) of development which suggests funding is often needed to test productive use of energy concepts before businesses can get off the ground.

The lion’s share of the eligible 157 applications were from off-grid energy companies or power suppliers. However, the proposals received from non-energy companies, most commonly agribusinesses, are a promising sign that a wider range of private enterprises are becoming integrated into productive use and renewable energy initiatives.

News

Energy 4 Impact and the Carbon Trust are pleased to announce the launch of the Powering Renewable Energy Opportunities (PREO) Programme, which aims to promote renewable energy in sub-Saharan Africa to boost long-term job creation and reduce poverty through economic growth and empowerment of women.

Co-funded by IKEA Foundation and UK aid and delivered by the Carbon Trust and Energy 4 Impact, PREO will support energy projects and partnerships that use a market-led approach to promoting productive use of energy (PUE), and support revenue growth in the companies involved.

While a reliable and affordable energy supply is vital for people living in rural sub-Saharan Africa to power their homes and businesses, energy access alone is not enough to transform economies. To be effective rural energy programmes need to consider the social and economic context for each local area to ensure the right enabling environment exists to build partnerships that give access to finance, technology and markets.

PREO promotes direct collaboration between energy users and power suppliers to realise the potential of energy access to improve livelihoods and boost economic growth. It therefore supports locally-relevant productive use of energy initiatives through:

• grant funding to stimulate investment and income-generating activities;
• partnership building support to bring various actors together for specific projects and programmes;
• offering advisory services to companies involved in PUE, including market intelligence, partnering and financing advice.

In addition, PREO aims to create a globally significant centre of PUE expertise in the sector, by developing a platform to support, direct and communicate market and project learnings, which will be key to achieve wider impact.

PREO is expected to create 3,500 jobs, empower 1,000 women and benefit more than 11,000 rural households.

By supporting PREO, the IKEA Foundation can effectively work together with other partners and investors to make renewable energy accessible to many communities more quickly, reducing carbon emissions and enabling people living in poverty to afford a better life,

says Jolanda van Ginkel, Programme Manager for Renewable Energy ,the IKEA Foundation.