{"id":3580,"date":"2019-07-05T07:24:12","date_gmt":"2019-07-05T07:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=3580"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:23","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:23","slug":"africa-is-facing-an-electricity-crisis-a-pay-as-you-go-model-could-solve-the-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2019\/07\/05\/africa-is-facing-an-electricity-crisis-a-pay-as-you-go-model-could-solve-the-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Africa Is Facing an Electricity Crisis \u2013 A Pay-As-You-Go Model Could Solve The Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By World Economic Forum<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nnumber of people in Africa without access to electricity remain staggering and\nunchanging<\/a> with\nevery report\u2014around 640 million people don\u2019t have access to a grid. And even\nwhen some of people do have access the electricity supply is unreliable and\nunstable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a problem across the continent. The most consistent and\npromising approach to tackling this huge obstacle to development has come with\nthe off-grid pay-as-you-go solar power model, now called PayGo. The sector\nstarted out in East Africa built around combining the improving and\nincreasingly cost-effective solar technology with the region\u2019s mobile money\nadvantage, thanks to the successful reach of Safaricom\u2019s M-Pesa in Kenya.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Companies like Nairobi-based M-Kopa, who we spoke with recently<\/a> at the Collision conference in Toronto,\nhave signed up 750,000 homes in the region on the back of that payment platform\nwhich has been key for also enabling users to obtain credit and manage their\npayments. \u201cThe energy is kind of the easy part,\u201d acknowledged chief executive\nJesse Moore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also on the panel<\/a> with Moore in\nToronto was the musician Akon, who has famously been building a solar power\nbusiness for a few years in several African countries. His latest initiative to\nto develop a crypto-currency to get round the difficulties with payments and\nboosting financial inclusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PayGo solar isn\u2019t just reliant on classic mobile money\nsolutions. In some countries it\u2019s being used with local bank partnerships such\nas in Nigeria or with credit bureaus in India, for example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rise and challenges of PayGo are covered in the World\nBank-backed Lighting Global report<\/a> which analyzes\nthe market attractiveness of the model around the developing world. Globally,\nthe sales volume of PayGo products grew by 30% last year with revenues growing\neven faster at 50% driven by customers upgrading to solar home systems beyond\nbasic products like solar lamps. According to the global off-grid solar\nmarket report<\/a>, PayGo companies\nrepresented just 24% of the sales volume in the last six months of 2018, but\naccounted for 62% of revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"

Lighting Global\/ Dalberg <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The two strongest markets for PayGo are Indonesia and Kenya,\naccording to Lighting Global\u2019s index, which looks at 71 factors across demand,\nsupply and enabling environment. On that basis Sierra Leone, Mozambique and\nAngola were the weakest markets for PayGo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it comes to demand Kenya and Uganda score high particularly\nwhen it comes to users\u2019 \u201cwillingness to pay\u201d, while Kenya also does well on the\nsupply side along with Indonesia, driven by the availability of finance to\nsupport the sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the report covers 24 countries across sub Saharan Africa\nand Asia, it\u2019s clear East Africa is the star of the show with more than 70% of\nthe global PayGo market\u2019s revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Lighting Global\u2019s country focus on Nigeria, Africa\u2019s largest\neconomy, the demand for PayGo services is the highest of country\u2019s\ncovered because of the\nunreliability of the country\u2019s existing grid<\/a> and low electrification rates especially\nin rural areas. The PayGo market has seen rapid growth in recent years with\nover 1.7 million households now using off grid solar products. But Nigeria\u2019s\ncurrent market penetration is still low, at just 4% of the potential market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read original article<\/a> on World\nEconomic Forum<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By World Economic Forum The number of people in Africa without access to electricity remain staggering and unchanging with every report\u2014around 640 million people don\u2019t have access to a grid. And even…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3582,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}