core sector communique

Ideas for Africa: Selling Solar

This is the first of five articles on some of the groups, programs and proposals discussed November 4-5 at the Africa Gathering in Washington.

By Jeff Baron

Staff Writer

Washington - Solar Sister is based on the idea that the millions of Africans who lack access to electricity can get solar energy from a source they trust: their neighbors.

The nonprofit group is building a network of women to introduce other women in their communities to solar-powered lamps, mobile phone chargers and other products. Most of its more than 150 entrepreneurs are in Uganda, but it is expanding into Rwanda and Malawi, and founder and chief executive Katherine Lucey said the idea can travel farther.

"There's 1.6 billion people in the world who don't have access to clean energy, to the grid. That's a $1 trillion-a-year market," Lucey said. "And if you look at who holds the purse strings on that $1 trillion a year at the household level, it's the women. It's the women who are purchasing $2 a week or $4 a week of kerosene. ... The best way to reach a woman consumer, especially with a brand-new technology, is from a trusted source like another woman who can tell her, 'I use the solar lamp at home. My children are studying more at night. I haven't had a fire in my home. My baby hasn't been burned. I'm saving 30 percent of our income because we don't any longer have to buy kerosene.'"

Lucey said Solar Sister uses a network of women who can show other women in their communities the products, make the sales and keep a profit on each order. The women pay nothing for the training, support and access to the inventory they need to start their businesses. "When they sell the inventory and get cash in, they keep their commission and pay back for the inventory," she said.

The initial products are the easy sales: solar lamps to save families the cost of kerosene, solar chargers to save them the fee to charge their mobile phones. "In Uganda, where we are, 75 percent of the people have cellphones; only 5 percent of the people have access to electricity. So people have to go and pay to have their cellphones charged," Lucey said.

As Solar Sister gains the trust of its customers, it hopes to sell more substantial solar products, including whole-house lighting systems, irrigation pumps, water purifiers and cookstoves. "If you have a clean cookstove, it means you don't have to go walk as far to collect wood, and therefore you're going to save time. So you could use that time to do something more productive," Lucey said.

Solar Sister's funding started with Lucey's family and friends; the ExxonMobil Women's Economic Opportunity Initiative is paying to expand the Ugandan program and replicate it in West Africa. Each program should become self-sustaining, Lucey said.

"We have global ambitions," she said. "Energy poverty is a global issue. Women needing economic opportunity is a global issue."

(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State.)