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> Posted by Jon Pattee
Creating synergies between decades of microfinance work and the expanding sustainable energy sector will be the topic tackled at a roundtable this Thursday, December 2nd, in Washington, DC.
“The most exciting thing about connecting microfinance with sustainable energy is the power to leverage the great work that microfinance outreach has done in the past 20 years to bring people the newest, most life-improving affordable technologies,” said David Levaï of the Center for Financial Inclusion, a roundtable speaker.
Levaï and Sonali Rohatgi (FINCA) will share the microphone in an interactive discussion about what works in this field, what doesn’t, and building on lessons learned. Levaï connects energy providers and microfinance institutions in order to offer modern and affordable energy solutions to the base of the pyramid. Rohatgi oversees the implementation of new product and technology-driven delivery channel projects. Read the rest of this entry »
>Posted by Michelle Romeu and David Levaï
The Center’s Energy Links project aims to broker partnerships between energy companies, microfinance institutions, NGOs, and development projects to alleviate energy poverty and facilitate the uptake of clean and affordable energy solutions in Africa.
Our podcast series, by the Center’s Senior Fellow, Paul Rippey, explores the latest innovations and efforts to provide modern energy to rural households without access to the electricity grid. This time, he reports from Tanzania.
In this first interview, host Paul Rippey talks with Felistas Countinho, Managing Director of Tujijenge Tanzania, about the progress of Tujijenge, an innovative microfinance institution that provides loans for clean energy. Countinho talks about what she has learned throughout the last decade, and looks to the future. This year, thanks to support from E+Co, a private sector investor in clean energy, she hopes to focus on solar-lighting loans, an area in which she has had a particular interest since 2003.
In the next podcast, Paul follows up with Nachiket Potnis, Executive Director of the Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI-Tanzania). Potnis describes ARTI’s compact biogas digesters, which convert organic waste (such as banana peels or leftover food) into methane gas, which is tapped directly into the kitchen to provide cooking fuel!
In both cases, there is a financial challenge to introducing clean energy solutions. However, since the technology is available and the demand is high, financing is the last hurdle to overcome to providing clean and affordable energy to the world’s poor. Let’s educate investors and donors to understand how dire the need is, and to make energy poverty one of their priorities.
> Posted by Michelle Romeu
Senior Fellow and Chief Consultant to the Energy Links project Paul Rippey is leading a course on “Modern Energy Business Opportunities for the Base of the Pyramid” from Wednesday, October 13 through Friday, October 15, 2010 (Registration deadline is September 27). Paul writes:
I’m going to be co-leading along with my good friend and colleague Harry Andrews, who is one of the founders of Barefoot Power. Energy Links has worked a lot with Harry and Barefoot, and they are a great folks: we like their values, we like their products, and they are creative and fun to work with. At the May 2010 Lighting Africa conference in Nairobi, their products won first or second place in every category and after years of hard work and no income, they seem to have become the leader in affordable lighting products in Africa.
The course that Harry and I are leading is part of the Sustainable Microenterprise and Development program offered by the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire. The course will be held at the Ocean View Resort on Zanzibar (somebody has to do it).
We will share what we have learned about building partnerships along the supply and distribution chains between microfinance institutions and savings groups, small-scale entrepreneurs, suppliers, and manufacturers. The second day of the course will take participants out to the field to interview people in villages, and find out how they use energy, what improvements they want and would be willing to pay for, and how they could finance them.
This is going to be great fun and I believe very useful – it will be hands on, and a great chance to network and learn. I enthusiastically invite you to participate.
You can find out more, and register in the program, at the course website here.
I’ll also be leading a presentation on climate change and development, inspired by An Inconvenient Truth, but also going down a few roads that Al Gore has never taken.
> Posted by David Levaï
Energy Link’s Senior Fellow, 
Paul Rippey, had an illuminating experience while traveling through Niger this week.
Paul, on a mission to one of the five poorest countries on the globe, works with savings groups, which are blooming all over the continent thanks to the efforts of committed international NGOs such as CARE, Oxfam, Plan International, Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and the Aga-Khan Foundation (AKF). One of the many purposes is to look for ways to improve the lives of the poor by increasing their access to modern energy, and that starts by finding out what energy sources people are using now.
When he reached the village of Gouroubankassam, Paul came across a most peculiar device: an artisanal LED lamp, locally produced out of Nigerian LEDs, Chinese disposable batteries and assembled scrap material, including wood for the stand and a used CD as a reflector for the LEDs. The best part: it only cost about 50 cents! These lamps have spread rapidly across the region, and are sometimes called “Obasanjo’s”, mocking the former Nigerian president who promised rural electrification but never delivered. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by David Levaï
We are very proud to announce that Barefoot Power, the three-year partner and supplier of solar lanterns for Energy Links projects in Uganda and Mali, won multiple product awards this week at the Lighting Africa conference in Nairobi, an international conference on off-grid lighting organized by the International Finance Corporation (IFC).
Barefoot Power's solar-powered LED Firefly lamp (two lamps on left) won numerous awards in the recent Lighting Africa conference.
Twenty-four finalists were evaluated and judged in 4 different categories. Barefoot Power won three of the four first prizes for room lighting, best value, and top performance. They also took the second price in the fourth category: task lighting. The solar lantern that Energy Links helps commercialize, called the Firefly, specifically won in the best value category for products that cost under $40 and came second in the task-lighting category.
The Energy Links project first started collaborating with Barefoot Power after extensive market research; Barefoor Power was offering the best quality lighting products at the lowest cost for the customers. We are happy that an international competition confirmed that this socially-minded business was one of the most reliable energy suppliers for off-grid distributed systems. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by David Levaï
What do these Barefoot Power and d.light design LED lamps have to do with African microfinance? Tune in to the next USAID Speakers Series to find out.
We at the Center’s Energy Links project would like to invite you to participate in the next USAID Speakers Corner on Microfinance and Energy: Scaling Up Energy Access through Enterprise-Based Approaches and Innovative Financing.
The three-day online forum will discuss energy and microfinance and explore how microfinance may help increase access to modern energy services. This event will be an opportunity to have an open dialogue about this burgeoning field, specifically…
- Day 1 Tuesday, May 11: Current Status and Successful Models
Facilitators: Ellen Morris (Arc Finance), David Levai (Center for Financial Inclusion) - Day 2 Wednesday, May 12: Opportunities and Challenges
Facilitators: Phyllis Kariuki (GVEP International), Kavita Rai (GVEP International) - Day 3 Thursday, May 13: The Path Forward: Scaling Up
Facilitators: Jennye Greene (E+Co), Jacob Winiecki (Simpa Networks)
To learn more and to RSVP, please click here: Microfinance and Energy Speakers Corner Event >
> Posted by Kelley Mesa
In the latest Energy Links Podcast Paul Rippey interviews Dipal Barua. Dipal was the Founding Managing Director of Grameen Shakti and remains a leader in partnering with microfinance networks for the distribution of clean energy products. He was the recipient of the first Zayed Future Energy Prize, given in 2009, and has recently founded a new company, Bright Green Energy Foundation (www.greenenergybd.com). In this podcast, he shares his ideas on how Bangladesh can become a “solar nation”!
Listen to the podcast »
> Posted by Kelley Mesa
Paul Rippey’s lates Energy Links podcast features a special selection of interviews recorded in the field, in Nyanza Province in Western Kenya, with savings group members who have purchased solar lamps. The lamps have been sold by one of the entrepreneur franchisees working for CARE to train savings groups – Leonida Bironga. Leonida confidently thinks she can sell a thousand lamps a month if she gets the supply, and that is about to happen. The future for village life looks much brighter all of a sudden in Western Kenya!
Listen to the podcast »
> Posted by David Levaï
I’ve just finished a week mission in Tanzania to jump start a new phase in our Energy Links program: begin building a real micro-energy sector in Tanzania by bridging the gap between the numerous energy companies (that have great innovations to offer, but struggle to reach scale) and the thriving microfinance institutions (that have a weekly access to a very large number of households, but lack the time or resources to offer energy solutions to their clients).
Until now we have worked on two ways to provide the most basic of energy needs: lighting through small solar lanterns and cooking through biomass briquettes. These solutions are not only cleaner than the existing alternatives of kerosene (for lighting) and charcoal (for cooking), but they are safer, healthier, more efficient, and, most importantly, much cheaper over the long run.
Our newest alternative solution for cooking is biogas. In Dar-es-Salaam I met with Nachiket Potnis, the director of Appropriate Rural Technology Institute and a genius Indian inventor who’s lived in Tanzania for over 15 years. He is commercializing a very simple compact biogas system Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Elisabeth Rhyne
Yesterday I had the opportunity to speak at an event I never expected to connect with – the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. This professional group, representing over 100,000 engineers of all kinds, is looking at how their profession can make a difference for people at the base of the pyramid around the world. They were surprisingly eager to learn from and maybe even connect with microfinance. The lessons I shared from Energy Links seemed to resonate with many people in the group. Great physical design is what engineers pride themselves on, but great design only has impact if it is embedded in deep market understanding, a sustainable business model, and a scalable supply chain – all of which suggest the possibly obvious point that cross-discipline cooperation is needed to solve problems.
Newly minted engineers are especially eager to make a difference, and they represent tremendous talent resources for development projects. In addition to renewable energy, I talked with people working on access for people with disabilities, on water, and on low-cost health care. The excitement of these folks was contagious. You can follow them on Twitter. The event is the Engineering for the Developing World Summit, and you can follow Twitter tweets through the topic #EDWS.
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