Sam Lakha, Manager, Volans Outreach.
Scaling solar energy in Tanzania
There is no scarcity of sun. But the sheer scale of the challenge to create solar energy solutions in Tanzania is daunting. Will energy entrepreneurs ever succeed? John Keane, SolarAid’s director of programmes in Dar es Salaam, is setting up a micro-franchising model to help poor people start small businesses that sell solar power products, but he is quick to point out the need to think strategically about their next steps: ‘scaling up this model will require a different type of infrastructure where we can leverage other existing distribution networks.’
It is difficult to create new businesses where the market doesn’t exist, and this is SolarAid’s challenge. Building a market infrastructure will require the coordinated action of investors, skills-building programs, and government agencies. Enabling this connectivity is the goal of the Rework the World initiative, a global partnership between the Tällberg Foundation and Youth Employment Systems (YES Inc.), which the Volans’ Pathways to Scale program is supporting.
On May 7th 2009, we are convening a workshop in Dar es Salaam in partnership with the Entrepreneurship Center at the University of Dar es Salaam’s Business School. The session ‘Reworking Energy’ will bring together SolarAid with other entrepreneurial initiatives, youth networks, business and investors, to catalyze some of the partnerships that are needed to scale.
The Rural Energy Foundation will be there. They are another market pioneer in Tanzania, which is helping retailers across the country market solar products by creating the much needed ‘industry information’ about products and suppliers. Godwin Msigwa, its managing director, will be coming to the session in May with proposals of how to scale up their work beyond the 50 retailers with whom they currently work.
TaTEDO, the Tanzanian Traditional Energy Development Organization, is another key player in this ecosystem. ‘Energy policy in Tanzania is set at the national level’ says Oscar Lema, its director for entrepreneurship and finance, told me. Top-down approaches to energy planning don’t work well to build local capacity and grassroots innovation. ‘We need to think about providing energy through enterprise’, he adds. ‘This requires a coordination of policies, technology options, finance, business skills, as well as both community and enterprise development.’ Working in 27 Districts across 10 Regions, TaTEDO is advancing district-level energy frameworks by creating small working groups that bring together government, community-based organizations, skill programmes, finance providers, and rural entrepreneurs. TaTEDO’s model is critical to scale the policy impact of entrepreneurs.
In the village of Vingunguti, a group of young people that have been trained by TaTEDO on how to build clean stoves have formed an enterprise that designs and produces more efficient coal stoves, the primary form of cooking in the country. Against all odds, they are now producing 15.000 stoves a month and employing 40 young artisans.
This is possible because TaTEDO has brought finance providers into the equation. Their collaboration with Savings and Credit Cooperative Societies (SACCOS) and actors implementing the Village Community Banks (VICOBA) have been first explorative steps towards what Oscar Lema calls ‘building local level institutional structures’ for scaling up energy access in rural areas. There is much work to be done to strengthen the conditions for local financial services for the poor, where initiatives such as the Financial Sector Deepening Trust (FSDT) are playing a key role. Moving to more robust financial services for the poor is seen as an essential blocks on which to build new energy alternatives.
The address for this blog entry is: http://www.volans.com/2009/03/scaling-energy-markets-in-tanzania/.
- Alejandro LitovskySkoll World Forum 2009
Several members of the Volans team spent several days at the Skoll World Forum in Oxford this week - Alejandro (Litovsky), Charmian (Love), Sam (Lakha) and I, with Geoff (Lye) dropping in for the session I moderated on sustainable transport and electric vehicles. The focus here was on scaling, on the macro level of change rather than just the micro. My panelists were Nancy Kete of EMBARQ, Josh Steinmann of Better Place, Peter Head of Arup and Ion Yadigaroglu of Capricorn Investment Group.
More on the Forum from their website. I will also post some personal observations on my own blog.
The address for this blog entry is: http://www.volans.com/2009/03/skoll-world-forum-2009/.
- John ElkingtonSkoll Foundation film
The Skoll Foundation has recently completed a short, 9-minute film about the field of social entrepreneurship. It provides a useful overview of the progress made over the past three decades. It starts with Mohammad Yunus and includes interviews with a number of social entrepreneurs and others in the field, including Sally Osberg of the Skoll Foundation, Bill Drayton of Ashoka, Jacqueline Novogratz of the Acumen Fund, author David Bornstein and myself. For more information on these and other social entrepreneurs, visit www.skollfoundation.org.
The address for this blog entry is: http://www.volans.com/2009/03/skoll-foundation-film/.
- John ElkingtonAmsterdam Declaration on Transparency & Reporting
One of the Trailblazers that Volans supports, alongside SustainAbility, is the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). A trip report on my second GRI Board meeting can be found at http://www.johnelkington.com/journal/. To my delight, we produced GRI’s first declaration, the Amsterdam Declaration in Transparency & Reporting. The full text can be found at http://www.globalreporting.org/CurrentPriorities/AmsterdamDeclaration/
The address for this blog entry is: http://www.volans.com/2009/03/amsterdam-declaration-on-transparency-reporting/.
- John ElkingtonWhere are the solutions? Road notes from Davos to Barcelona…
I know there is a crisis going on out there. I experience directly every morning as I get on the Tube at Liverpool station, in the heart of London’s financial district, where people walk slouched over, noticeably dragging their feet with their grey suits and greyer faces and actively avoiding any chance of eye contact. I try to force myself to smile when I walk in the station, even if it’s before I’ve inhaled my first coffee, but inevitably the headlines in the newsstands catch my eye, or I see another 70% off sign in a shop window….
This feeling of there being a giant discontinuity playing out around us was thick in the air at an event I attended in Davos this January. Despite having my new favourite accessory, ready to use as a show-and-tell to explain what social entrepreneurship is all about (one of Eako’s stylish handbags made of salvaged fire hose - http://www.fire-hose.co.uk
) I was surprised at the heaviness and pessimism that infected the town. I’ll admit that my time and exposure to the full ‘Davos’ was extremely limited, however from my eavesdropping perch at one of the bars in the main hotels it seemed people were mainly focused on the problems, with little talk about solutions.
Fast forward one month exactly to Barcelona the weekend of February 27th. I was invited to chair a panel at the Doing Good and Doing Well Conference at IESE (http://dgdw.iese.edu/) with three upbeat and positive entrepreneurs. Kyle Zimmer from First Book (http://www.firstbook.org/ ), Lily Lapenna from MyBnk (http://www.mybnk.org/) and Jessica Jackley from Kiva (http://www.kiva.org ) - each a stunning role model and inspiration in their own right. Yes, they admitted that the recession was making things tough, but guess what, that didn’t mean that there wasn’t room out there for growth and ideas – and with times changing there will be new opportunities to create new kinds of value!
The students agreed…
In the panel introduction I asked the group of about 100 how many of them were entrepreneurs. A handful of hands went up. I then asked how many aspired to be entrepreneurs either after graduation or down the line. Many hands shot up. And how many people had an idea that connected to social and environmental value creation at its core? Most of the hands STAYED up! I then asked if there was anyone brave enough to share their idea with the crowd - which led us to twist the panel into an interactive session where these entrepreneurs in the making bravely and energetically pitched their ideas to the group. Fabulous. Opportunity bursting forth!
The students and other participants seemed to agree. With very few recruiters on campus this year, MBA graduates are being forced to think about solutions –and it is encouraging to witness creativity emerging - rooted in looking for opportunity in these dark times. And what better setting than a city full of colourful and vibrant art like Barcelona where Gaudi’s La Sagrada Familia serves as the beacon?
So maybe this is a generational thing. If it is, then I’ve found the light I’m setting my sights on to get me through the doom and gloom. What is putting a smile on my face in the morning is the Phoenix generation of business leaders and entrepreneurs who see opportunity in the ashes of the crash.
The address for this blog entry is: http://www.volans.com/2009/03/where-are-the-solutions-road-notes-from-davos-to-barcelona/.
- Charmian LoveLess Carbon, More Jobs
One of the things we have talked about for some time at Volans is how we might most usefully map the ‘power of unreasonable people’ - and the evolving ‘Phoenix Economy’, the subject of the report we plan to launch at the Skoll World Forum later in March. An interesting step in that direction has been made by Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), which has been mapping the emerging green economy, specifically companies that are both cutting carbon and creating jobs. For more details, see http://blogs.edf.org/greenroom/2009/03/02/mapping-the-green-economy/
The address for this blog entry is: http://www.volans.com/2009/03/less-carbon-more-jobs/.
- John Elkington