Energy

PEG Africa is a young company which aims to bring off-grid solar energy access to rural and peri-urban communities in West Africa by providing pay-as-you-go (PAYG) solar home systems to rural and remote customers. The company has started its activities in Ghana.

The model of the company is based on the combination of technical, distribution, and financial innovations:

• Technical innovation: the product itself is a small solar kit allowing the client to light a few bulbs, recharge a phone, and listen to the radio. It is connected with the PEG management information system through mobile technology allowing the company to monitor remotely a number of items.  
• Distribution: the company is setting distribution points with dedicated sales teams around the country.
• Financial innovation: this is probably the most important innovation. The client is paying its solar system as he uses it through mobile money payment of a few Euros per month. If he doesn’t pay and recharge credit, the system is blocked and not usable by the client. After one year of payments, the client owns the product.

PEG has secured a licensing partnership with M-KOPA, the leading company in PAYG solar technology in Africa. M-KOPA has successfully deployed its products and methodology to more than 200,000 households in East Africa.

The entrepreneurs

Hugh Whalan, the CEO, has focused on energy and financing in West Africa for the last 6 years. He started the first crowd-funding site for energy, and a fast growing solar distribution company in Ghana, which he sold to a NY-based investor. Prior to his work in Africa, he was the director of business development for the largest US based carbon project developer.

Nate Heller, the Chief Operating Officer, has over 13 years of experience in international development, including stints with the UN, the Peace Corps, and multiple social enterprises. He spent 6 of those years building innovative distribution channels for poor consumers in West Africa.

Partnership with I&P

I&P committed alongside PEG to:

• Finance and support the company’s expansion drive in Ghana and the sub-region

• Help structure the business in its early stages and institute appropriate corporate governance

• Facilitate debt and grant capital fundraising for the company to meet its target objectives

Expected Impact

• Connect over 500,000 remote and rural households in West Africa to solar power within 5 years

• Create significant financial inclusion by making off-grid households into a knowable and attractive customer proposition

• Reduce carbon emissions by replacing traditional kerosene use with a cleaner source of power

• Grow local employment by partnering with large local sales teams to drive growth over multiple regions

Conergies designs, engineers, installs and provides maintenance for air conditioning and industrial cooling systems.

The group gathers two subsidiaries in Mali (RICA Services) and in Côte d'Ivoire (ARIC). Being comfortably settled in Mali, the group plans on a large-scaled deployment in Côte d'Ivoire where the construction market remains globally depressed. Around 80% of Abidjan towers need restoration and virtually no investment were made in the past 15 years within the sector. The local offer needs a structuration force which RICA is able to embody.

THE ENTREPRENEUR

Mamadou Sanankoua graduated in Mechanics Engineering from Polytechnique Montreal and in International Project Management from the Ecole Supérieure de Commerce of Paris. His academic path thus combines technical and financial skills with business engineering experiences earned within great industrial firms (Schneider Electrics, Daikin Europe). He decided to take the lead in the family business then ran by his father in 2001 to pursue its leadership over the sub-region alongside with his brothers and a friend.

PARTNERSHIP WITH I&P

I&P has committed alongside with Conergies:

• To bring technical assistance resources needed to renew the Management Information System

• To support through marketing assistance and guide the company during its rebranding process

• To build up the governance

KEY IMPACTS

• A dozen jobs created in the new Ivorian subsidiary

• Awareness and expertise brought over efficient energy

• Health and security trainings for the employees

Created in 1980, CDS is a Mauritanian company involved in energy and water access for all and especially in the rural zones where the populations are deprived from this access.

Its activity is three-fold:

• Public service delegation : water and electricity distribution in partnership with state and local authorities
• Installment and maintenance for electro-mechanic works: potable water access, hybrid or solar systems, water treatment plants, network extension…
• Distribution of water and electricity equipment working on renewable energies: solar heater, refrigerator, wind turbines, immersed pumps…)

CDS is one of the companies featured in the project Small is Powerful

THE ENTREPRENEUR

Sidi Khalifou is graduated from Sup’Meca Paris where he volunteered at Engineer without Borders. He was a project manager for the GRET and for ECODEV an NGO he co-founded committed to local development and environmental issues in West Africa.

He joined CDS as a shareholder in 2007, then run by his father. He took the lead of the company in 2010.

PARTNERSHIP WITH I&P

I&P committed alongside with CDS

• To accompany the company’s development through additional public service delegations contracts

• To enable the company to sell and distribute equipment in rural areas

EXIT

In partnership with CDS’ promoter, Sidi Khalifou, I&P sold its shares in 2016 to Engie Rassembleurs d’Energies and the Monaco-based impact firm SADEV. Both these partners will continue to support CDS in its development strategy and impact objectives.

KEY IMPACTS

• 20 jobs created (2015 data) 

• 30 800 households given access to drinking water, which represents close to 1,400 irrigation systems set up by CDS

• Water and electricity access equipment sold in 2015: 423 solar kits, 59 solar water heaters and more than 20 pump stations 

• 17 national suppliers 

• Enhancement of renewable energy-powered practices

• Private sector strengthening and Knock-on effect on the economic environment (agriculture, manufacture…)