The MECS seminar – at 9am on the first MWC day – kicked off the programme and despite the early hour, the room was full, with over 150 attendees representing every continent and every sector of the Telecom industry.

Chris Locke, Managing Director of GSMA M4D, introduced the seminar by presenting the programme’s objective: to find ways for the mobile industry to provide access to both energy and water services in off-grid areas. Building on the strong foundation of the Green Power for Mobile and the Community Power from Mobile Programmes, MECS brings to the forefront two realisations:

1. Energy is the backbone of the mobile industry, without it, the mobile’s added value ends there
2. Mobile infrastructure is often available in the most remote areas: more people today are covered by mobile networks than have access to energy and water, with a total estimated addressable market of 575 million people.

With this in mind, Jose Maria Figueres, President of the Carbon War Room, opened the discussion on the potential of the mobile phone as an efficient weapon in the war to reduce poverty and carbon emissions – a potential MECS embodies. JM Figueres then pointed at one of the main challenges of taking the discussion out of the CSR department into the business development strategy of the Telecom industry.

The panel composed of five forward-looking entrepreneurs – operators, vendors and energy service providers – D.S Rawat, CEO of Bharti Infratel, Anil Raj, CEO of OMC Power, Joe Griffin, Group Environment Manager at Vodafone, Mike Lin, Co-founder of Fenix International and Jesse More, founder of M-KOPA.  Each explained how they are tackling this challenge, stimulating innovation to create business models which deliver both commercial and social value.

The speakers sparked a rich conversation so I will stress only a few key points and attach below both the seminar’s video as well as each of the speakers’ presentations.

Need for leadership

• Champions are necessary to lead the way in innovation. For example, ten years ago operators could not conceive the idea of sharing their towers, while tower companies are now increasingly moving into a RESCO model, partnering with energy service companies to provide power through a distributed generation approach, using clean and renewable energy sources.

Creating a win-win situation

• The MECS model provides a win-win situation as the community receives better and more sustainable services while operators benefit from an improved regulatory environment, a boosted local economies and reduced OPEX (up to 61% according to Vodafone).

“Spend shifting”

• For the community as well as the vendors, the objective is to shift the spending, i.e. redirecting, as well as reducing, spending on kerosene or diesel and instead investing in available renewable energies such as wind, solar or biomass.
• It is necessarily about providing un-expensive products as “the poor cannot afford cheap”. Investments in robust technology, after sales services, and data usage are a requirement for the services to be used and scale.

Role of mobile

• The mobile phone allows scale by “cutting the cord” and going wireless
• The mobile, but more importantly the Value Added Services “piggy-backing” on top of it, have to potential to create a “mobile energy model” highlighting synergies between energy and mobile.

Challenges

• Establishing a reliable, trusted and extended distribution network
•  Creating brand loyalty in order to develop a relationship and trust with the customer
• Invest in data services to know your customer and respond to his needs
• Avoid making assumptions about communities’ local need

The MECS journey is only beginning, leveraging mobile infrastructure and technology to deliver energy and water access to off-grid communities, empowering them and providing with ways to increase their revenues. Service providers are already developing new services beyond mobile phone charging, such as lighting, cooling or water metering, using renewable energy sources.

To conclude Jose Maria Figueres highlighted the shift from Person-to-Person to Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication services – a market representing a trillion dollar and a 9 giga tons CO₂ reduction per year by 2020 according to CWR’s report.

The time is right, it is now up to the stakeholder community – private sector leading the way – to realise the potential of mobile to increase the telecommunications’ business case in the emerging markets while having a positive social and environmental impact.

Please find below the presentations and videos of speakers:

• M-KOPA: Presentation | Video
• Fenix International: Presentation | Video
• OMC Power: Presentation | Video
• Vodafone Community Power: Presentation
• Bharti Infratel: Presentation | Video

View the full recording of the seminar below

As the Community Power from Mobile latest annual report on “Service over Technology: Defining the Role for Mobile Energy Access” has just been published, we took advantage of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week to ask vendors showcasing their products and services on our stand their thoughts: Service or Technology, which one will lead to a successful business model? All interviewees agreed that while good technology is necessary for a solution to develop and scale, it is not enough.

Technology is at the core of service providers’ work but…

… it does not guarantee the delivery of an efficient service. Therefore taking into account both technology and service will bring out the potential for new business opportunities to arise, as suggested by Dr Robert Hope, Senior Research Fellow at Oxford University’s Water Science, Policy and Management programme.

Utility solution providers also tempered the importance of technology as often it is simple and un-sophisticated. Be it a solar powered charger, a remote data collection platform, a biomass gasification plant or a renewable energy micro power plant, the main focus remains the service provided to the end user.

“Technology is not a big deal, the supply chain and the service to the community is what matters.” Felix Ertl, Co-founder of Pamoja CleanTech

“We are only making a simple battery but it enables the rural communities to start small businesses and earn an income off of it. And that is what we are interested in.” Brian Warshawsky, Chief Operating Officer, Fenix International

Other key lessons

If technology is a necessary but not sufficient condition for successful service delivery, other key elements also need to be considered, as our latest annual report suggests.

• Context is crucial and each market will suit its own business model. “A service will pick up if it answers real needs. It will then need to be integrated into the value chain, through an adequate business model and a good distribution network.” Daniel Annerose, CEO and Founder of Manobi
• Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) can be challenging to work with as, while interested in energy solutions that support their off-grid customers, they are hesitant to trial new concepts. “We need references for MNOs to follow”, explained Felix Ertl.
• Raising funds for product and service providers, not only in their initial development phase (the “valley of death”) but also as they grow (the “missing middle”) continues to be an issue, as confirmed by most vendors interviewed.
• New utility solutions are being researched through machine-to-machine (M2M) connectivity, increasing sustainability and resilience of decentralised utility services.

It is very interesting to observe how solution providers are constantly looking into the future, expanding their scope of services as, once the technology is developed, the service is the one main component to change.

“We want to leverage the technology and bring high efficient solar back-up solutions to various devices to be part of the hybrid renewables.” Jouko Häyrynen , Suntrica Ltd.

“We will continue broadening our portfolio to address the power needs and the desires of off-grid communities, working with other entrepreneurs to provide mechanisms for economic development.” Brian Warshawsky.

Sparking the conversation…

Defining the role of technology, and more specifically mobile technology, in energy and water access is a complex task. Many variables need to be taken into account and the solution provider will always go back to the question: what are the needs of the community for the service to be adapted and used.

We would love to hear your views on the debate of service over technology and the importance of user-centric product and service development, so please leave your comments and spark the conversation.

With its technology and significant size and reach, the mobile industry can help address these challenges and provide an unprecedented opportunity for scale in impacting lives. Mobile technology and infrastructure are already being used to improve access to energy and water through product distribution via existing channels, pay-as-you-go financing via mobile payments, and remote activation, monitoring and data collection.

The GSMA’s Mobile Enabled Community Services programme will work with our mobile operator members, energy service companies, community service providers, and other key stakeholders to foster partnerships and gather and share knowledge. The programme provides innovation funding and delivers the evidence, champions and trials required to drive solutions to the next phase of maturity.

The programme aims to help improve access to basic energy and water services in underserved communities using mobile technology and infrastructure. Together with the UK Government, the GSMA are launching Mobile Enabled Community Services at Mobile World Congress 2013! The MECS team have been busy preparing the grand entrance and what a line up we have to help us do this!

Our Main Seminar – Energy + Mobile for Development

• When – Monday 25^th February 2013 from 9.30 to 11.30am
• Where – GSMA Seminar Theatre, CC1.1

After announcing its partnership with Safaricom in October 2012, M-KOPA is currently scaling its operations throughout Kenya and their Pay As You Go Solar Home Systems are now available in more than 300 Safaricom shops. To understand more about M-KOPA’s overall strategy and perspectives on the usage of Machine-to-Machine (M2M) connectivity, I recently caught up with Nick Hughes, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of M-KOPA, to gain some insights into their service and their journey towards scale.

MN: Nick, can you tell us more about the M-KOPA concept and what was its origin?

NH: M-KOPA makes clean energy affordable to customers in Kenya by combining machine-to-machine technology and mobile payments.  We offer customers the chance to purchase solar energy equipment on a pay-as-you-go basis; they pay a deposit and get a good quality home lighting system. The customer then makes payments to us by phone to top up the number of days credit on their system.  They pay us whenever they want and can buy as many days credit as they like. We use M2M technology and software embedded in the solar equipment to turn it on or off according to the customers’ payments. In brief, we are ‘asset-financing’ clean energy hardware that would otherwise be unaffordable. In fact, our customers save money when they use M-KOPA, each day of credit costs about US$0.40 and is less than they would spend in cash, day-to-day for inefficient fuel like kerosene or batteries (often US$0.50 to US$0.70). What’s more, after 12 months (or sooner) they own the system outright and do not pay anything from that point.

M-KOPA has its roots in my belief that mobile technology can be a major enabler for new, innovative services. For me, this started nearly 10 years ago when, at Vodafone, I began to explore the mobile payment concept that became M-PESA. We launched M-PESA commercially in 2007. In what is a relatively short space of time, mobile money schemes are growing all over the world and changing the way people transact. Today, I am more convinced than ever that mobile technology can allow us to tackle development issues such as access to energy. Plus they can be commercially exciting. On the rails of existing infrastructure, we can now reach many more consumers than was ever thought possible and business models are starting to emerge that utilize this connectivity.

MN: The ability of users to pay for energy by small installments using their M-PESA account is one of the key features of the M-KOPA products. Can you tell us more about the impact of these Pay As You Go solutions?

NH: Mobile payments provide the flexibility to mirror how people pay for things in cash – especially people on low, variable income, and that’s the majority of people in developing economies.

It is all about making small transactions securely and at a low price, as and when you need to. Through the work of people like Stuart Rutherford (one of the authors of Portfolios of the Poor), we know that people on low-income deal with cash up / cash down challenges every day. With M-KOPA, we have designed the service to allow customers to use flexible payments via their mobile wallet (M-PESA). In doing so, we are simply aligning to the reality of their day-to-day income and ability to pay.

What has been fascinating to watch since we launched, is how some people buy more credits than they need when they have spare cash. In other words, they use M-KOPA to lock up that spare cash against a future ‘known need’ (days of energy). Also pleasantly surprising is the extremely low number of people who are slow repayers. In a recent independent survey of 300 customers, over 97% said they had recommended M-KOPA to friends and family.

MN: Do you see the M-KOPA model being replicable in countries where the deployment of mobile money services hasn’t been as successful as it is in Kenya?

NH: Yes, for sure. There are multiple ways to make small transactions work, conveniently and at relatively low cost, remotely or over long distances. Further, very few people now doubt the emergence of mobile money. What remains debatable is how quickly these schemes will grow. This is complex and depends on appropriate regulatory frameworks and who is driving the business model (banks/MNOs/third parties etc), but at the end of the day scale is a function of time. We sometimes forget how long change takes – mobile money has only been around for five years or so at scale. Credit cards took more than 20 years to become established, check out Visa’s history. What is also very clear to us – is the gap in access to energy. There are probably close to 1.5 billion people that lack access to reliable grid electricity, the majority of whom are likely to own a phone. So, at a fundamental level, our business model works because it’s a solution addressing a massive problem. We have the challenges that all new businesses have – but we are focused on making this replicable and scalable across markets and products.

MN: You partnered with Safaricom in Kenya last year for the distribution of the M-KOPA units through its agent network. How did you build this partnership and what’s the situation today?

NH: Safaricom has always been at the cutting edge of innovation. Their brand and reputation is huge in Kenya and when we had the opportunity to share the M-KOPA concept with Bob Collymore, Safaricom’s CEO, we jumped at the chance. Bob saw a lot of alignment with Safaricom’s ambition to bring new services to their customers, especially around digital inclusion and green power. Also, our business model works on an agent commission basis, where re-sellers of M-KOPA units collect commission over time as the customer pays down the balance on the unit. So, there is a good fit with the way Safaricom and many other MNOs build and incentivise their distribution channels. We are pleased to continue working with Safaricom and we are very excited that Safaricom and M-KOPA have just been short-listed for a GSMA Award this year.

MN: At the recent AfricaCom conference in South Africa, Alan Knott-Craig Sr, CellC CEO, talked about the rise of machines as the main users of mobile telephony in the next decade and quoted: “In 5 to 10 years, don’t be surprised if more machines have SIMs than people”. How do you see M2M connectivity impacting emerging markets and underserved populations in the next years and what are the big challenges?

NH: I am in 100% agreement – M2M will be huge and we are just at the start of the growth curve for services like M-KOPA. This is especially so in developing economies where the opportunities to ‘connect’ via other infrastructure is limited. One key challenge is finding the technology price point that will unlock the market demand & supply constraints. Cheaper handsets and pay-as-you-go price plans opened up access to mobiles for vast numbers of people.  We need to see M2M develop the same way. For example, today a simple M2M modem might cost $15. I can buy a whole, simple phone for almost the same price. There is a lot of complexity here – but the core underlying technology costs need to adjust. There are also challenges for the service providers about making this work seamlessly for the consumer. Whilst we use smart technology we are running a service model and M-KOPA has built a great customer care team and set of tools to manage this side of the business. For example, we have invested a lot in our billing and customer care system that manages and monitors every customer and their device(s). This allows us to immediately support customers with problems. At any point in time we can check their payment status and usage history, and tell whether the unit is working well or needs attention.

MN: What do you think is needed to build a conducive environment to the growth of M2M connectivity in resource constrained economies?

NH: It’s a good question with many potential issues wrapped up in it, but for M-KOPA it starts by solving real problems for customers. If we get that right, the rest should follow. If we can either save a customer some money or help them increase their productivity in some way, then we have the fundamentals in place to make this happen at scale.

MN: Does M-KOPA have any ambition beyond developing access to energy in emerging markets?

NH: There is a lot to keep us busy right now and 90% of our team is focused on operations.  That said, this space is moving fast and we allocate time and resources to new product development. With generous support from organizations like the Shell Foundation, DFID (UK Government) and the Lundin Foundation, we are pushing on with new M2M concepts and ideas. The sweet spot for us is where M2M can be coupled with mobile payments. The breadth of opportunity is massive – just step back and consider what else you might want to monitor, turn on / off remotely and collect payments against.

Thank You Nick.

The report published recently entitled “Sustainable Access to Energy & Water through M2M Connectivity“ is the result of this research and aims to shed light on the opportunities created by M2M solutions to reach and empower underserved populations in the developing world.

The same way SMS messages have become one of the building blocks of modern communications in emerging markets, simple GSM M2M connectivity could create seamless networks of connected infrastructures and devices beyond wealthy urban circles. In underserved urban and rural locations (2.47 billion people were living with less than USD2 per day in 2008), M2M connectivity has the potential to bring more resilience to decentralized systems often plagued by poor maintenance and will allow to collect critical information about the population who use them. It is also about creating two way communications platforms, where end users are connected to their service providers through the systems they are using, at a personal or community level; it is about building stronger relationships between institutions and households often living without access to sustainable energy, clean water and/or financial institutions.

Some key facts from the report:

• From urban to rural areas, mobile networks have become the predominant infrastructure in emerging markets, allowing more people to be covered by mobile networks than have access to energy and water. GSM infrastructure is increasingly reaching far corners of the world, mobile handsets are increasingly getting into the hands of low income population (even though there remains room for growth [1]) and M2M modules can be more easily integrated in a wide range of equipment.
• If service delivery remains critical to commercial success and sustainability, technology can surely support business models and empower customers. In the M-KOPA example, the convergence of GSM M2M connectivity for remote monitoring of Solar Home Systems and mobile payments through the M-PESA platform is allowing low income population to afford clean energy solutions under a Pay As You Go model.
• Mobile technology has a social impact, especially when it is the only available infrastructure. Considering water access in Africa, where there are important problems of maintenance and sustainability of water pumps, the inclusion of M2M connectivity in simple water pump structures would increase real time information about water access and quality at the local and national level.
• Beyond pilots and nascent commercial deployments, some challenges remain for entrepreneurs providing M2M-based services to better reach the full population lacking access to energy and water. As an important element to achieve scale in resource constrained economies, a section of the report is focusing on the opportunity to design a new GSM M2M module: a simpler module design integrating lighter functionality and achieving lower cost would stimulate the integration of M2M in a wider range of products.

Opportunities and challenges lie ahead, as the success and the scale of such M2M based services at the Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) will require active participation from chipset suppliers, entrepreneurs, mobile operators, regulators. M-KOPA, currently providing Pay As You Go solutions for energy access in Kenya, presents at the end of this report, their in-depth testimony about the challenges they envision in increasing the impact and scale of M2M services for the BoP.

In this coming year, the GSMA will continue its efforts to raise awareness around the potential and challenges of M2M solutions for underserved populations, connect main stakeholders to catalyse market growth and support innovation from micro-entrepreneurs in this space.

Historically, Senegal has provided leadership in the continent and represents a hub of democracy and political stability in the West African region ⁴. However, one of its challenges is the high unemployment rate (49% in 2010)⁵ that especially impacts a young generation of students coming out of the local universities. As part of its Poverty Reduction Strategy, the Senegalese government is now promoting entrepreneurship to create wealth and foster economic opportunities.

One of the engines for economic growth and job creation could be fuelled by a dynamic mobile market and strong ICT skills from a young generation of entrepreneurs. After a recent visit to the CTIC in Dakar, the local incubator for ICT and mobile technology entrepreneurs, there is a real sense that technology entrepreneurship is beginning to boom in this part of West Africa.

Leveraging the strong engineering programs from the local universities, the CTIC supports companies and project leaders in their creation, development and growth. Less than two years after its creation, CTIC currently supports 11 companies and had 24 startups in its 3 to 6 months acceleration program. Some of them are now expanding their activities in other West African countries. Supported by private and public sector partners (InfoDev, IFC, Sonatel, GIZ, Center for Development of the Enterprise (CDE), the Government of Senegal, etc.), the CTIC also fosters the regional ICT Entrepreneurship ecosystem through seminars, workshops, networking events and other events, like Startup Weekends.

At the recent DEMO Africa conference in Nairobi, showcasing 40 emerging African startups, Senegal was the only French-speaking country represented, with 3 companies presenting their solutions. These 3 companies were incubated at the CTIC, including agribusiness resource Mlouma.

Mlouma is a web and mobile service that allows farmers and agribusiness to connect and receive information about the purchase or sale of agricultural products through real-time market information. In a country prone to drought and where nearly 70% of the overall workforce in Senegal is engaged in the agricultural sector, initiatives such as Mlouma are key to empowering small-holder farmers and building resilience. As only 20% of the population has direct access to the internet, mobile phones are most of the time the only tools of empowerment for the rural farmers.

With key events such as Startup Weekends, TechCamp Dakar in August 2012–the first TechCamp to be hosted in Africa⁶ – and Apps4Africa held in Dakar in December 2012, Senegal is steadily becoming another major innovation hub in Africa for developers and technology entrepreneurs. Added to CTIC work, technologists can also count on the Bantalabs, supporting the developer’s community, and Jokkolabs, an “action tank” for social change, to provide support to local projects.

Capitalising on their strong program, the CTIC is currently looking to replicate its model and build partnerships with incubators from other African countries such as Mali, Ivory Coast, Niger and Gabon. Adding to the current local technology hubs, this is a positive step to foster innovation and further support the growth of technology entrepreneurship for the creation of commercially-viable businesses and socially-impactful projects.

Photo: Courtesy of CTIC

Below are our favourite pictures from our travels in 2012.

Women collecting water at dusk in Senegal, about 50km from Tambacounda.

A sorry state of sanitation near Kaolack in Senegal.

Mobile subscribers place their phones on 6 foot high sticks to capture mobile signals in Sofala, Mozambique.

An OMC Power employee completes a daily delivery of charged lanterns to customer households in Uttar Pradesh, India.

In a Nicaraguan village that just received mobile signal, a phone charging business emerges at US$0.20 per charge.

In a post published just as Sandy made landfall along the southern US coast, our Disaster Response team outlined the preparations that US mobile operators were making to help mitigate the impact on networks, including portable generators for back-up power supply  and installing high capacity batteries. Despite these efforts, power outages and flooding disrupted some telecom services in the Northeastern states, affecting coverage for cellphones, television, home telephones and internet services.

For those who still had mobile coverage, the power outages meant mobile phone data plans became  important lifelines to stay informed about Sandy, with many relying on Twitter for announcements and updates in their area. This contrast of using mobile data during the power outages posed an interesting exchange at the time on Twitter, with the below tweet from New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.

This prompted Richenda Van Leeuwen, the Executive Director for the UN Foundation’s Energy and Climate, Energy Access Initiative, to respond with the below tweet:

As power outages continued in the days post-Sandy, a challenge grew for those using their devices to stay connected when battery levels died. This meant many people were left searching for creative ways to charge their devices around New York City. One Manhattan-based clean tech writer got lucky with her Nokero SunRay Pro Power solar panel, allowing her to charge her phone and later explaining that, “…only one of them would generate enough charge through my window on an overcast day to charge my phone, and that device was the Nokero Pro Power Panel. Nokero had graciously sent me the power panel the year before as a product sample, and I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t happened to have this nifty little gadget in my house.”

Nokero, along with other off-grid product companies such as Barefoot Power Ltd., Fenix International and Azuri Technologies, manufactures and distributes affordable, sustainable and safe solar-based technology including lights and battery chargers. These companies provide solar-powered light and charging products for those highlighted by Van Leeuwen in her tweet, the other 1.3 billion people in emerging markets without access to the electricity grid. With the majority living in Sub-Saharan Africa and underdeveloped parts of Asia, this lack of electricity is an everyday reality. As mobile has outpaced the grid, those with mobiles have the added challenge of finding a charging source, which often means walking for miles to the nearest charging kiosk and paying for the service. For example, the CPM team was recently in Mozambique, where 97% of rural households do not have grid power and where in some towns, kiosks and barbers make good business at about US$0.30 per phone charge. As well as staying connected to family and friends, fully-charged devices allow people to access and use valuable life-enhancing services, such as mobile money, health and agricultural information.

As the International Year of Sustainable Energy for All draws to a close, perhaps the post-Sandy experiences of those in the Northeastern states who were trying to use their mobile phones without grid power will help to shine a light on the 1.3 billion people currently living without access to electricity, many with mobile phones themselves.

Photo: Top left, from  DNAinfo.com New York

We hopped on planes from Nicaragua, London, India, Dubai and Kenya to meet in Accra, Ghana. Mary was the first to arrive and spent time at the first International Off-grid Renewable Energy Conference which was co-hosted by IRENA, Alliance of Rural Electrification and ECREEE. The two-day event covered policy, regulation, finance and technical topics through eight sessions, six workshops and 27 exhibitors. Mary was also invited to speak on the panel, ‘Innovation and Findings in the Field of Off-Grid Renewable Energy.’

The rest of us arrived on the 5^th November, and we hosted our inaugural Community Power from Mobile Working Group, which was sponsored by Tigo, at the Movenpick Ambassador Hotel.

Mary opened the day and gave an overview of the history of Community Power from Mobile. Following this, we invited Garry Bridgwater, Integrity Manager at Millicom, to give a welcome presentation and he talked through the role of the Integrity team to reduce energy consumption and promote sustainability. Their strategy has a strong ethos to create value, reduce cost, develop legitimacy and reputation and as a result to gain competitive advantage.

To conclude the morning’s session, Michel Mansard, member of the Alliance for Rural Electrification Board, shared lessons learned. The conclusion was drawn that there is no single business model to address the 1.4 billion people without access to electricity and that what is required is a bottom-up de-centralised approach with long-term partners as well as policies and regulations with clear targets.

The rest of the day was divided into 3 panel discussions:

• Panel 1 – Mobile Operators Driving Community Power from Mobile
• Panel 2 – Leveraging Mobile Infrastructure for Community Energy
• Panel 3 – Mobile Enhanced Utility Access and Leveraging Distribution Channels

Further details about the outcome of these panels can be found on our highlights document.

Sanjay Khazanchi from the Rockefeller Foundation’s SPEED programme concluded the day, talking about their rural electrification programme in India. Rockefeller Foundation also generously sponsored an evening cocktail reception for the group.

The next two days were also spent at the Movenpick Ambassador, this time for the Green Power for Mobile African Regional Working Group. For more details on the outcomes from this event, please see our highlights document.

By the 8^th November, Mary and I were ready to get out into the field and had the opportunity to visit an Altobridge Lite-Site in Botuku. We made the three-hour journey there and were welcomed by the village elders who were keen to show us around the site and tell us what impact having mobile communication had on their lives. There were particularly excited about the new ICT centre and library that was being constructed in the village, courtesy of their local government. They even took our email addresses so that they can keep in touch when the facilities are up and running!

While my time in Accra came to an end, Mary and Michael continued on to Dakar. Stayed tuned to hear more about the Lighting Africa Conference and their three-day road trip around Senegal!

In the remote communities around Ganze, near the Kenyan coast, charging a mobile phone is a major challenge.  The nearest source of electricity may be 15-20 km away, about a three hour walk. Typically, communities gather their phones together and someone takes them and deposits them at a charging kiosk in Ganze. Two days later, someone else makes the same journey to collect the charged phones. As a result, residents of the remote communities are without mobile communications for days at a time, and often turn off their phones to preserve battery, impacting their business activities and reducing their ability to keep in contact with friends or family. Many fear losing their phones while they are away being charged.

But in one community 15 kilometres from Ganze, things are changing. Samuel Kapelekesho started providing a phone charging service from his grocery shop four months ago, bringing significant benefits to him and the community. Since he started charging phones, sales of goods at his shop have increased. Samuel also sells the local hooch, called Mnazi, which is made from fermented coconut milk.  Many of his customers like to share a drink while they wait the two hours for their phone to charge. He has a lot of happy customers!

Three of Samuel’s customers enjoying a bottle of Mnazi

Samuel is one of ten entrepreneurs participating in a trial of a solar phone charging unit called Mobi, developed by award winning company Azuri. The compact battery unit, solar panel and two LED lights, has been designed to operate on a ‘pay-as-you-go’ basis similar to Indigo, the company’s home lighting product.  An entrepreneur pays a deposit to acquire the system and then pays a monthly fee to access a code which is used to reactivate the system through a key pad on the unit. Payments are made through mobile money.

The ten participants in the trial were recruited by GVEP International which advertised the business opportunity and screened over one hundred applicants. GVEP staff provide business coaching for the participating entrepreneurs and are gathering data on the trial. I visited all ten entrepreneurs during October, with Azuri staff joining me for some of the visits.

Samuel’s 30W panel outside the hut where he charges phones

Four months in, all of the participants in the trial say they are happy with the units. Mobi is much easier to use than a conventional solar system. It requires no maintenance and the simple plug and play design makes it easy to install. The units charge phones more quickly than a conventional system and the phones hold their charge for longer. The two LED lights which come as part of the kit will operate throughout the night and have enabled the entrepreneurs to eliminate kerosene from their homes and shops. There is a considerable saving in expenditure.

Fifty miles away from Ganze, another Mobi entrepreneur, John Kadzoyo runs an electrical store just off the main Mombasa/Nairobi highway. His Mobi unit is operated by his wife from their home some kilometres off the road. She is able to use the cash she earns to meet household expenditures. Before they had Mobi, the family kept small kerosene lamps burning during the night. ‘When we woke in the morning we had soot around our nostrils,’ John told me.

Jessica Kobe – half of the businesses are operated by women

Although nine out of ten of the entrepreneurs who signed up for Mobi are men, half of the units are actually operated by women – wife, mother, daughter or employee. Ruben Kobe, who has a welding shop in Kaloleni has set his daughter, Jessica, up in business with the Mobi unit he acquired. ‘She has a baby,’ he explains. ‘With Mobi she now has money for her needs and I do not have to worry about providing for her. Without Mobi she would just have been idle.’

In one location the entrepreneur who acquired Mobi has installed it in a community school where he is on the governing committee. The school has no electricity and the Mobi unit LEDs have been used to provide light for exam preparation classes held in the evening. Previously the school used kerosene lights.  The students bring in their parents’ phones when they come to school and take back the recharged phones in the evening.

In many locations competition is growing with many charging stations setting up. Phone ownership is still growing, as is the use of phones (airtime.) The standard rate for charging a phone is 20 shillings (US25 cents.) In two places Mobi operators were charging 15 shillings, and in one of those places a competitor was charging 10 shillings. We have been expecting to see price competition emerge for a while but this is the first time I have actually seen it.

A Mobi unit charging phones

Most of the entrepreneurs using Mobi had operated a phone charging service before using a conventional set up. A few are completely new to the venture. All appreciate the monthly payment system, everyone has been topping up regularly, and all say they plan to continue until they have bought the system. From the phone charging revenue, other additional revenue and savings on kerosene, the monthly top up was affordable for even the weakest performing business. All believe that they can hold their own against competitors because of the lower cost and higher performance of the Mobi unit.

Useful feedback was gathered on features which could be further improved. Azuri are now reviewing next steps with the ambition of starting to roll out an iterated version of Mobi at greater scale. A full evaluation of the trial will be completed by GVEP after a further two months of operation.  But the preliminary findings appear to be very encouraging.