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| Sally Kayoni at Murenju general store in Bomet, Kenya, sells more than 200 solar lamps every month |
It's hard to know where to look in the crowded interior of the
Murenju general store. The entrance is flanked by multicoloured
mattresses stacked like surreal sandwiches. Rolls of linoleum flooring
stand under shelves groaning with speakers, while cooking pots hang from
the rafters amid the bunting of adverts for a pay-TV service.
Sally
Kayoni, the shopkeeper, stands on tiptoe to be seen over a counter
lined with car batteries, radios and DVD players. Yet the prime retail
space on the eye-level shelf behind her is given over to small solar
lamps presented in a neat row. They get pride of place because they are
among her bestsellers.
"I had so many customers asking for them,"
she says. Each month she sells more than 200 of the simple devices,
which cost a little over £6 and when charged in direct sunlight will
light a small room from dusk to dawn.
The 34-year-old runs one of
the busiest shops in Bomet, a fast-growing town of four streets and
clanking construction two hours' drive from Kenya's world-famous safari destination, the Masai Mara. With its paved roads and electricity, it is typical of east Africa's
new boom towns, servicing a hinterland of small farms that operate off
the grid, accessible by dirt roads plied by motorcycle taxis.
Kayoni
first started to notice the solar lamps when they were brought to the
area in 2012 in a striking canary-yellow van owned by SunnyMoney, a
subsidiary of the UK-based charity SolarAid.
They
were initially distributed through the area's schools, where
head-teachers were persuaded to pitch the lamps to parents as a way of
helping children to do their homework. One year on, a conventional
market for the lights has been created and they are sold in shops.
A business owned by a charity may sound novel, but rather than giving
away solar lamps, SunnyMoney has deliberately chosen a commercial
strategy, in the belief that this way its simple but effective
technology can find an enduring foothold.
"We take a business
approach because that is what this market needs," says Steve Andrews,
chief executive of the not-for-profit company. He wants to see solar
technology follow in the footsteps of mobile phones, which have become
ubiquitous in Africa over the past decade, thanks to a support network
of retailers and services.
SunnyMoney has sold close to one
million lights, making it the biggest retailer of solar lamps in
sub-Saharan Africa. On average it makes a loss of 13p on each light it
sells, but when the goal is to open up new markets by selling as many as
possible – rather than make an immediate return – that is a sign of
success.
"Philanthropy allowed us to be aggressive and pursue
markets that didn't exist before," says Andrews, "because we don't have
to answer to shareholders seeking an immediate return."
Some
40,000 lights have been sold in the Bomet area alone and SunnyMoney is
on course to break even in the next two years, at which point profits
will be ploughed back into the parent charity SolarAid. What some donors
might find controversial is the chief executive's belief that people
value more a product they have to pay for than something given away.
Much
of sub-Sahara Africa is littered with the detritus of good intentions –
projects from refrigerated fish-packing factories on desert lakes, to
secondhand computers – that failed to meet real needs in the communities
where they landed.
Fewer than 20% of Kenyan homes have access to electricity and are
therefore forced to use fossil fuels such as kerosene for lighting.
Households that give up the kerosene lamps they used previously can
expect to make a saving of roughly £40 a month, which can be spent on
school fees, food and other goods. "Previously the money was leaving the
community and going to global oil companies [through kerosene sales],"
Andrews says. "Now it is going to local businesses."
The
educational impact of thousands of solar lights in once-dark homes can
be measured around Bomet. Christopher Sigei, the area education officer,
has been doing just that: "In the evening it has been working small
miracles."
Asked about local access to electricity, he smiles and
describes it as "zero point something". The average mark in national
exams in the poorest neighbourhood, he points out, has risen from 215 to
233 in the first year since the lights went on sale.
These kinds
of benefits have turned headteachers such as Stanley Rugut into solar
evangelists. The beaming 58-year-old, who has sold about 6,000 lamps,
drives around the area's rutted roads in a battered old estate car with
leopard-skin seat covers and a solar panel on the dashboard. "I like to
charge the lights while I'm driving," he explains.
He talks about
old model S1 and S2, as well as newcomer light system Sun King, with the
same enthusiasm with which smartphone owners debate the pros and cons
of new brands and handsets. Rugut has been rewarded for his hard work
with lights rather than cash, and his skills as a salesman have allowed
him to amass dozens of the lamps.
"I have all of them, and people are always coming round and very excited to see them," he says.
Meanwhile, back at the Murenju general store, the one thing you will not
find is kerosene. "I no longer sell it," says Kayoni. "After I started
selling these," she points at the solar lamps, "there was no one asking
for it any more."
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