In Nigeria, a young entrepreneur by the name of Olugbenga Olubanjo has created a revolutionary product looking to fight power outages. His company Reeddi, has created a solar battery capsule as a cheaper alternative to generators used by many Nigerian citizens in the event of an outage. Power outages cost the Nigerian government $28b, which equates to about 2% of their GDP. As a student of engineering in Africa, he went through regular power outages during the school day and came up with a solution.
His batteries can be expensive, renting them for $450 dollars per day. But that is cheaper than running a generator on petrol or diesel these days. His goal is to both solve energy insecurity and environmental problems caused by fossil fuel consumption. His batteries contain enough energy to run a tv, refrigerator and a laptop for 5 hours. With 600 million people across the continent lacking access to power, Olugbenga’s invention is a step in the right direction.
He shows exactly what the private sector can do. He has already helped supply 1600 people in Nigeria. He will likely be able to supply more if he has the funding to distribute. In fact, there is a UK based mobile power company in the region already, which can help provide that funding. The private sector can bring in the capital and the resources to help fund global energy initiatives. In this case, they are hitting two birds with one stone, climate change and energy security.
Public-private partnerships to provide energy security and reduce our carbon footprint will be a necessity. Solar power in Africa is useful because of the position of the sun and little covering the ground. Companies across Africa and outside of Africa can invest in these companies to help manufacture and distribute the product across the continent. Governments can also invest in the product and help provide the product for a cheaper price to the public.
What comes next from the international community? We are starting to see we have the tools to build smart and sustainable energy infrastructure. Now it is time for the international community to act. Build private-public partnerships and we will see drastic changes.
Author: Joshua Cheatham