It’s possible to “design things right” and yet not “design the right things”. In a short report, M-KOPA Labs shares lessons learnt from developing its solar-powered PAYG Fridge and how its customers helped M-KOPA Labs to get the product “right”. Download the full report Everyone wants a fridge, right? Market surveys regularly record refrigerators in the…
As part of our continued strive to discover innovative technologies and business models that bring improved energy access, we have recently supported Bboxx – alongside our co-funding partner the UK Government – to launch a new payment platform that allows Rwandans to ‘send energy home’ from anywhere in the world. Friends and family can use…
How does productive use biogas appliance innovation contribute to increased energy access, to rural livelihoods and to the development of biogas as a utility? Smallholder farmers are among some of the most disadvantaged people in the developing world, without access to technology, training and financing to improve productivity. There are an estimated 570 million smallholder…
Ethiopia is the world’s third largest potential market for solar products but also one of the most challenging. PAYGO solar product providers have traditionally found it difficult to penetrate the 60 million people off-grid population lacking access to energy due to several factors: A complex regulatory environment low mobile money penetration (one of the lowest…
SF partners Sistema.bio and SMV Green have both been recognised by the prestigious Ashden Awards 2019. Sistema.bio was presented with the Clean Cooking Award for its work to bring clean biogas to farmers in Latin America, Africa and India. Its innovative and affordable biogas system turns animal waste into clean and odourless cooking fuel whilst producing…
Key Facts Distributed nearly 8,500 solar home systems in over five Ethiopian regions Able to leverage 7,400 BelCash agents network and brand Many of the worlds 1.3 billion off-grid population are concentrated in a limited number of large frontier markets, like Ethiopia. HelloSolar was co-created by SF and BelCash, the leading mobile money and Value…
Key Facts Has built a platform known as OmniBranches that delivers financial and non financial services to the underserved market OmniBranches leverages a widespread network of about 20,000 agents to deliver services throughout Nigeria Is partnering with NoMap (the Nigeria Off-grid Market Acceleration Programme) to address the payment collection difficulties faced by Solar Home Systems companies Swifta…
KEY FACTS Part of the Cardano Development family of companies, Frontier Finance Solutions is creating a Development Impact Bond (DIB) to finance companies bringing better cooking solutions to market in sub-Saharan Africa. The DIB combines several impact measures using the Gold Standard multi-SDG impact methodology, including: Reduced CO2 emissions Improved life expectancy Time saved by…
The Uganda Off-Grid Energy Market Accelerator (UOMA) is a neutral intermediary focused on accelerating the growth of off-grid energy access in Uganda to enable universal energy access. SF co-created UOMA in 2017 in partnership with USAID, Power Africa and the UK Government, to be implemented by Open Capital Advisors, a management consultancy headquartered in Nairobi,…
In 2014, around 80% of Uganda’s population, or approximately 30.9 million people, lacked access to the grid network and in rural areas the electrification rate was as low as 10%. Grid extension is often not a financially viable option for areas sparsely populated or hard to reach and off-grid energy solutions, like solar home systems…