Shell Foundation partner Kofa’s multi-purpose battery network has recently featured in articles in both CleanTechnica and Medium demonstrating how urban transporters and micro-entrepreneurs across Africa can lower costs and increase productivity through access to clean energy tech.
Based in Ghana – with funding from SF and UK Aid from the UK government under its Transforming Energy Access platform – Kofa is initially concentrating on clean energy powered electric motorcycles and stationary backup power needs. The CleanTechnica article highlights the motorcycle sector as a $30 billion annual market across Sub-Saharan Africa; over half of this spending is on petrol for motorcycles, and the rest used for petrol and diesel to run generators.
Read the CleanTechnica article
Kofa is building a technology platform to manage a swappable battery network. The battery packs produced by Kofa are extremely portable which makes them ideal for swapping and the Kofa motorcycles can carry two batteries at a time.
The Medium article focuses on how Kofa is helping SMEs access reliable power for productive use during blackouts. For shops and commercial business owners in Sub-Saharan Africa, productivity is a key concern when power outages occur, especially for businesses that sell food and/or drinks or medicines. Kofa has piloted a novel approach for backup and remote power by using lithium ion multi-use batteries for such cases. A multi-use battery empowers users to decide how, where and when to use them and can be used to power an EV one moment and then re-tasked as a backup “generator” for a business the next.
Kofa’s goal is to reach 10 million customers across Africa actively using its battery network, equivalent to offsetting 10 million tonnes of CO2 per year by displacing petrol.