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Community Entrepreneurship combines with Venture Capital in Africa

In Sri Lanka, a country of 20 million people, approximately 10,000 injuries and 100 deaths occur annually from burns. 80% are flame burns, mostly due to spilled kerosene lamps, open firewood stoves and exploding kerosene stoves. Women aged 10-40 are most affected – these incidents often emanate from the kitchen. There are few global estimates, but expert opinions indicate that, for 1.5 billion people using kerosene lamps and 3-4 billion using biomass or kerosene in dangerous stoves, 1 in 100,000 dies from burns, or 15,000-40,000 people annually. Injuries total 100 times this rate – 1 to 5 million people per year, one every 20 seconds.

12 July 2009

Burns are but the tip of the iceberg – the poor, mostly women and children, consume the equivalent of several packs per day of smoke from indoor cooking, resulting in chronic respiratory disease and eye diseases. Indoor air pollution is ranked as the 3rd biggest killer of the poor, killing 50 times more people than burns, twice as many as AIDS and five times more than malaria or TB – around 1.6 million deaths per year. Energy poverty must be reduced.

Implementing interventions via the traditional aid model requires us to calculate the cost of a solution ($100-500/household for electricity, an improved cook stove, etc), then multiply by the need – 300 million households lacking electricity, 500 million using biomass cook stoves.

A total of about $100 billion implemented. Using 10-year lifetime technologies, this results in an annual cost of $10 billion. This is 10% of annual international aid. Will donors spend 10% of their budgets directly on energy? Donors do not change habits quickly, despite calls from the likes of Jeffrey Sachs, Kofi Annan and the Millennium Villages Project.

An alternative model utilizes existing village economies. The Lighting Africa and Lumina Projects found the poor spend $1/week on kerosene and disposable batteries for lighting. For 300 million households, this is $15 billion/year. Households often spend even more on cooking fuels – the poor’s energy expenditure could be $50 billion/year. The World Bank only spends about $0.5-1 billion annually on rural electrification.

Microfinance, a great success story, is only a $5-10 billion/year industry. Hence, there is far more cash available in the villages than available from aid. This cash expenditure is literally burned – in lamps, in stoves – resulting in zero assets. Our challenge is to engage the poor as poorly serviced consumers, offering innovations to redirect their cash into long-lasting energy assets. With innovative design, brave investors and adventurous entrepreneurs, the poor can end energy poverty far faster than the traditional aid model.

To cause redirection of expenditure by the poor, capital-intensive energy investments are broken down into 3-12 month payback increments.

Barefoot Power’s home lighting products are plug-and-play expandable systems. 100,000 people already benefit from solar desk lamps we have sold, for cash, to the poor across 15 countries. Microfinance partners are also being engaged, to either give loans to entrepreneurs who can sell $5 - 20 products for cash, or to give 1 year consumer loans for $15-100 home lighting kits. Larger kits can recharge mobile phones, a technology which has perfectly proven that small, mobile infrastructure can very rapidly leapfrog old pole-and-wire technologies. For this innovative products and concepts, Barefoot Power’s reversed rural electrification ranked 11th in the 2009 Australian Anthill Magazine Smart 100, and won 3rd prize in the 2006 global Business in Development competition.

Despite this recognition, Australian venture capital firms and cleantech investors are reluctant to invest. Local donors have also been difficult to convince. To fill this gap, we aim to replicate in Australia our successful engagement of angels and social investors from Europe and North America. Attending the February 2009 National Angel Investors meeting started this engagement, and the organizers, including Jordan Green, have been very enthusiastic, as have several angel groups.

With angels engaged from Europe, USA, Australia and Asia, the Barefoot Angels program has gone global. A new co-managed Fund aggregates this interest, seed-financed by four foreign social investors, who have been financing the poor across 50 countries for 30 years, and have never lost a cent (www.oikocredit.org). With such management expertise engaged, Barefoot presents investment in cleantech for the poor as a viable option to Australian investors. We have de-risked pro-poor energy investments, by showing we can, in a 4-6 month cycle, manufacture, ship and sell renewable energy to the poor, allowing investors to “dip a toe in the water” via 6-12 month loans.

Barefoot Power will reach our goal set in 2005 – to help 1 million people gain access to electricity by 2010. As market leader and keeper of promises to the poor, our 2015 goal can only be limited by the support received from investors. We hope that soon at least 50% of investment in Barefoot Power, an Australian company, can actually come from Australia.

By 2020, the majority of the poor need no longer suffer injuries and deaths from archaic energy technologies and bringing an end to poverty this century via pro-poor innovation can create inspiring, rewarding and challenging career paths for young Australians.

By Stewart Craine, Barefoot Power

For more details please contact info@barefootpower.com.

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