Lightbulb moment forged in fire
A blaze in his home sparked Vincent Mosebe’s bright idea for a cheap solar power solution
● A township youth injured in a fire that almost destroyed his home has bounced back to invent a portable power solution to help others avoid a similar fate. Vincent Mosebe has burn scars from trying to save belongings when his room caught fire in Vrygrond, Cape Town. Fast forward four years and he was invited in March to exhibit the “Tsepo” solar-powered device at a global entrepreneur congress.
Mosebe and his co-directors are now developing the third generation, hoping to export it to Sub-Saharan Africa. It can charge appliances such as laptops and lights and has a built-in 3,000V bug zapper — to help with pest control. They are completing copyright and bureau of standards applications, buoyed by support from the government’s National Development Agency.
Mosebe considers the fire the spark that ignited his business idea. “The cause of the fire is still unknown — we think it may have been an electrical fault,” he said at the Sozo Business Incubator office in Capricorn Business Park where he is part of an entrepreneurial training programme.
His engineering talents were evident when he insisted on dismantling and rebuilding toys as a child. He was a top achiever in engineering and design at Heathfield High School, and created a watch to play MP3s. “It got us into trouble because my friends used it to cheat during exams, they recorded themselves.”
His mother, Trudeth Mosebe, said he had a curious habit of upgrading toys: “When he was young I used to buy him Lego toys, battery cars and remote control aeroplanes. Then when he was older he liked to make engines for his toys.”
Co-director Donovan Pedzai said Mosebe’s innovative ideas impressed colleagues at the Sozo Foundation: “It was almost like he was a magician coming up with all these tricks.”
Pedzai was not initially sold on the idea until his own Vrygrond home was partially burnt in a shack fire in 2023. “At first it didn’t make sense to me, but then I experienced a similar thing. I nearly lost everything when my room was burnt. That incident impacted me in a terrible way.”
Mosebe, Pedzai and marketing director Leandro Antonio have set up a company, Mosebe Enterprise, and get business training at the incubator hub, a nonprofit programme assisting 20 people from Vrygrond.
The product is informed not only by the prevalence of shack fires but also “energy poverty” and the fact of millions of South Africans are dependent on candles, paraffin stoves and illegal electricity connections.
Mosebe said another motivating factor is addressing pollution, specifically electronic waste due to improper disposal of lithium batteries, which end up in landfills and cause water pollution. Tsepo (isiXhosa for hope), uses only recycled lithium batteries acquired from electronic repair shops. “The plastic casings we get from next door — discarded casings from devices that get returned. In my community we are facing shack fires but at a global level we’re facing climate change. That is why our portable power stations use recycled material,” said Mosebe.
Cape Town businessman Steve Reid, whose company Entreprenacity supports emerging small businesses, said Mosebe’s success was a combination of natural ability and learning. “Very few folk are born with it. The great news is that potentially, all can benefit from intentional exposure to the entrepreneurial mindset.”
He said the team has many obstacles to overcome before bringing the product to market — a costly business. “Launching a new product and business require a whole lot of factors including resources. While access to resources is one of those factors, the aspiring entrepreneur also thinks about how to get stuff done in spite of scarcity. That’s what sets them apart with attributes like resilience, persistence, realising and taking opportunities and true grit.”
The initiative earned a mention by the South African Government News Agency, which said the “innovative” device would target “informal settlement households who would otherwise utilise unsafe power methods, including candles and illegal connections, that often lead to settlement fires — and those at the mercy of constant and prolonged power outages and cable theft”.
The Cape Chamber of Commerce & Industry said Mosebe’s journey was an example of turning adversity into opportunity: “[It] illustrates why South Africa can and should succeed, no matter the challenges we seem to invent for ourselves.”
Sozo Foundation skills development programme director Stephanie Esau said youth intervention was vital to support under-resourced communities such as Vrygrond where there are no high schools.