Currently, at least 50 percent of the entire populations in 38 of the 49 sub-Saharan countries live without electricity — worse off, 51.4 million of 54.3 million people (94.7 percent) living in Liberia, South Sudan, Central African Republic, Chad, Sierra Leone and Malawi do not have electricity.
Eternum energy, founded by Siten Mandalia, creates new opportunities for the more than 1 billion people who live without access to modern forms of energy. Through their pay-as-you-go solar energy platform called Solaris, sustainable and scalable energy to rural households and businesses are paid for through regular mobile payments, aligning with current expenditure on energy, and making it affordable to everyone.
Their smart technology and robust distribution model allows them to deliver clean lighting, communication, enterprise opportunities and access to finance to rural populations across the developing world. Initially providing clean lighting and phone charging, so children can continue studying after dark and the dangers of kerosene can become a thing of the past. While also providing more appliances so that their customers can use it to start new businesses, from charging their neighbor’s phones to opening a barbershop.
Solaris has already reached its 900th system installed in the off-grid countryside of the north of Tanzania, providing flexible access to electricity to nearly 5,500 people in 2016. With local success in Tanzania, those working in Solaris hope to see even larger growth expanding abroad.
“With the Solaris Offgrid CRM we are now able to collect and manage data of nearly 1,000 clients. The features evolved as we grew, which is quite useful when you are managing a fast expanding start-up like ours! Thus, we rely on the platform…to help us deliver an equivalent (high) quality of service at 10,000 installations, allowing our staff to keep gaining in efficiency when managing their daily tasks deep in the bush.”, says Charlène Giraudier, Country Director of Solaris.
In order to reach their customers they are building a flexible and robust distribution network. Their network of shops build awareness and create a prominent local presence as well as providing a base for our local operations.
Safe, reliable solar energy can do more than just (literally) change the way we see things. It’s been observed that as a direct result of better access to energy, children can spend more time studying after dark and therefore perform better at school, for example. It’s no surprise that solar-powered lights effectively cut out the toxic kerosene fumes which are currently to blame for 4 million deaths a year, as well as dangerous levels of CO2 emissions.
