Start-ups powering continent’s solar energy ecosystem

START-UPS are increasingly offering advanced energy solutions to the majority of people across Africa facing blackouts, brownouts and poor electricity supply

SunCulture has raised over US40 million to equip rural farmers with solar-powered irrigation systems.

Often referred to as the“Sun continent,” Africa receives more hours of bright sunlight than any other continent. But even with 60 percent of the world’s solar resources, Africa has only one percent of solar generation capacity, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Due to energy production and infrastructure challenges, some African countries regularly deal with blackouts, brownouts and poor electricity supply.

Then the Covid-19 pandemic hit the global economy hard, and commodity prices surged after the invasion of Ukraine, making energy even more difficult for poorer Africans to buy.

Increasingly, start-ups rather than established corporations are offering access to advanced solar energy solutions to the majority of people across Africa.

By harnessing the sun’s power and transitioning to clean energy, Africans can expect major economic and social developments across the continent. are laudable, achieving high levels of growth is not easy.

Emily McAteer, founder and chief executive, of Odyssey Energy Solutions spent more than a decade working to finance and build distributed solar projects across Africa and India.

African nations have immense potential to benefit from utilising solar energy.

The firm provides technology and finance solutions for distributed renewable energy businesses. At every stage of project development, she hit key bottlenecks that make it hard for solar companies like hers to scale.

By offering tools for solar developers to aggregate and pitch portfolios of projects to financiers, firms can access capital more effectively.

To procure equipment more effectively, Odyssey streamlined the procurement process by negotiating directly with original equipment manufacturers for better prices and warranties and by working with developers for supply chain support.

“Operations and maintenance, especially in remote areas, can be a big hurdle,” Ms McAteer said.

“We offer hardware and software that sits on top of solar assets so that operators and investors can get deep insight into performance and optimise performance of their systems.”