Story

I am a South African Humanitarian with a dream to provide solar products to all townships, informal settlements, and villages of Africa starting one area at a time.
The vision is for each home to have: one indoor ceiling light, one outdoor flood light, and one power bank – solar-powered. The total cost is R1000 together ($55 per household depending on the exchange rate). The plan is to light up 1000 households at R1,000,000 ($55310).
My target market is mainly people living in townships and informal settlements. South Africa suffers from load-shedding and load-reductions which are frequent electricity outages by the government to manage the demand on the national electricity grip.
1) These products are affordable: they will save poor people who are low-income earners or are unemployed during the dark hours.
2) Connectivity: the solar power bank, assists clients will now be able to charge their mobile phones instead of going to the neighborhood spaza (small shop) and paying a small fee to charge daily – that means that they can remain connected and they save the charging fees.
3) Crime reduction: With the high crime rates and rape rates in South Africa, people living in informal settlements are now when using my products able to go to shared toilets with lights – this helps because in the dark, women are targeted by rapists.
a. When people travel to homelands, the indoor solar lights can be set to light from 18h00 until 21h00 hours and the outdoor flood lights can be set on auto, coming on when it gets dark and switching off at sunrise. This gives the illusion that people are home and deters people from breaking into people’s homes.
4) Education: Children who normally study under candlelight, can now use solar lights.
5) Green Energy Benefit: This is also good because it encourages people to migrate green energy, and is good for the environment.
6) Shack safety: Every year shacks burn in informal settlements because people use dangerous goods and methods to light such as illegal electricity connections – with these products, people will be safer. People will also save money in the long term because the products have a minimum 10-year lifespan.
7) Once one area is electrified as a pilot, the products will be sold that will create jobs as an additional benefit: get unemployed youth to sell my products for a commission. (Youth working assists in being a preventative measure for youth to move so drugs.