The Most African problems can be solved by increasing the amount of energy each country produces; and speaking of energy we are talking about the basic energy of lighting. Many use Kerosene lamps which is hazardous to both the health and the environment.
More than 500 million Africans cannot afford to get electricity in their home and solar powered lighting is not pocket friendly either due to their initial cost; that is why Tanzanian Start up, ‘KARIBU Solar Power’ wants to bring solar energy to the locals.
KARIBU helps the Tanzanian Citizens to buy the solar lamps in instalments by dividing the lamp into three parts, the solar panel, the battery and the lamp itself. This is how it works, a customer will rent the battery and the lamp at a small fee and will take the battery to be charged everyday which they will have to pay. As the customer pays for the charging everyday they keep redeeming the total cost of the whole lamp and when they reach the total amount (cost price of the lamp), the customer gets to keep the lamp, battery and KARIBU will give them the solar panel to charge the battery.
“By splitting up the conventional solar lamp into its components, we split up the payments, replicating the cash flow for kerosene, which in turn make the solar affordable,” says the company.
KARIBU Solar Power was founded by Adam Camenzuli, who lives and works in Tanzania; although the company takes care of the East African market mostly in the rural areas where lighting is very expensive.
The other part of the team include; Ricki Tatz, Sameer Gulamani- founded enerprises in East Africa, Afzal Habib –operational expert, Oluwaseum Kolarinwa and Andrew Clark.