In sub-Saharan Africa, where more than 600 million people still lack access to electricity, off-grid renewable power is seen as one of the fastest ways to get energy where it’s needed, particularly to remote and rural areas where many Africans live.



But one big challenge stands in the way, experts say: Too few trained workers able to plan, install and maintain solar, wind and other clean energy systems.



In power-hungry Goma, in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, for instance, “we’ve had very significant challenges finding very capable talent, particularly at the senior management level,” said Kweku Yankson, head of human resources in Africa for BBOXX, a clean energy company working to expand off-grid systems in 12 countries from Rwanda to Pakistan.



Rwanda, in turn, has what Yankson described as a big pool of job-ready young talent – but still relatively few people trained in clean energy technology, Yankson said.



Overall, only 16,000 people are recorded as working in renewable energy in sub-Saharan Africa, outside South Africa, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).



That is just 0.1 percent of the global renewable energy workforce, and fewer than the number of people who work on wind power in the U.S. state of Illinois alone, IRENA noted.



But with demand growing for renewable energy entrepreneurs and for workers in product assembly, sales, marketing, finance and intellectual property, efforts are now underway to provide the talent needed.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">4.5 MILLION JOBS</h4>



A Powering Jobs campaign, launched in October at an international off-grid renewable energy conference in Singapore, aims to train up to a million people globally by 2025 to meet demand for renewable energy workers.



The effort, led by Power for All – an organization that promotes more use of decentralized power – and backed by the Schneider Electric Foundation and The Rockefeller Foundation, will focus on building skills in countries where electricity access is very low, said Gilles Vermot Desroches, director of sustainable development at Schneider.



The push is part of a broader global campaign to fill an expected 4.5 million jobs related to expansion of off-grid renewable energy by 2030, according to IRENA estimates.



That expansion is focused in part on achieving a global sustainable-development goal of providing universal access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy by 2030.



In Africa, lessons are being drawn from India, which has trained more than 30,000 solar electric installers in the past two years as part of a government-backed effort.



The country aims to train a total of 50,000 installers by 2022, according to India’s government.



One of the biggest problems facing expansion of renewable off-grid power in Africa is that systems need to be built and operated in remote locations, where it can be harder to attract and retain staff, said Yankson of BBOXX.



Also, even in countries such as Rwanda, where a growing number of multinational companies have trained large numbers of young workers, “the most pressing challenge has been around finding very capable and experienced managing directors and finding senior finance managers,” he said.



In Kenya, Yankson said, the difficulty is cost: Skilled talent comes at high salaries, thanks to competition for the best people in Nairobi among companies and non-profit groups.



“The main limitation we’ve faced in Kenya has been the cost of talent,” he said.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">NEW LEADERS</h4>



To provide a broader pool of potential hires, BBOXX has created the BBOXX Academy, an online learning platform that offers professional courses, said Emery Nzirabatinya, a former learning and development manager at the firm who now works in Nairobi for a U.S. hearing aid company



BBOX also has started a future leaders program in Kigali, he said.



“The program seeks strong university graduates that are put through a rigorous, year-long development and exposure program at BBOXX,” Nzirabatinya said.



Julienne Ayinkamiye, a recent civil engineering graduate from the University of Rwanda College of Science and Technology, is one of two inaugural participants in the leadership project in Kigali.



As part of the program, she is responsible for running a BBOXX pilot solar lighting project being launched this year in Rwanda and then across Africa, and has worked in a range of different departments of the company.



The work has included customer satisfaction research and analysis of competitors, she said.



She said she believes the training, “will help me increase my analytical, project management and general management skills” – and give BBOXX a larger potential pool of talent to hire.



“I am now working on real projects impacting the lives of thousands of rural households across Africa,” she said.



The push for more trained renewable energy workers comes as an increasing number of countries around Africa try to ramp up use of off-grid renewable energy.



Kenya in December launched a new national electrification strategy that includes stand-alone, off-grid renewable energy systems as a key part of the country’s goal of achieving 100 percent access to electricity by 2022.



About three-quarters of Kenyans currently have access to electricity, according to the new plan.



Part of Kenya’s push is an off-grid solar access project that aims to connect 1.3 million people in 14 particularly under-served counties, said Isaac Kiva, secretary of renewable energy in Kenya’s Ministry of Energy.



“We are also now working with our education system to develop solar-specific curricula in order to build the necessary capacity,” he said.



In Rwanda, the government is collaborating with U.S.-based universities, including Carnegie Mellon, and partnering with online learning efforts to provide better access to training for clean energy jobs, Nzirabatinya said.



“This will have a positive impact on the job readiness of the talent pool in Rwanda,” he predicted. -Reuters



-Geoffrey Kamadi

Operations At The Senergy Santhiou Mekhe PV Solar Plant As Dawn Of Solar Age Declared

Renewable Power Surge In Africa Faces A Shortout: Not Enough Workers

Off Kampala’s chaotic arterial streets, we are on a dirt road with speed bumps that are large mounds of red earth. The red leads to a yellow building up a slope with awkward barbed wire fencing on its compound walls.
We are at Kiira Motors Corporation’s offices in Ntinda, in northeastern Kampala, home to what the company calls ‘Africa’s first electric car’ and ‘Africa’s first solar-powered bus’.
Outside the main building, a large white bus is parked under a makeshift shed. A scaled-down model of the same is placed under the stairway leading up to the offices. In the distance, a profusion of plantain trees; and a searing sun at 9:30AM.
The bumpy roads to Kiira are in a way akin to the journey ahead for this automobile start-up, ever since the green transportation initiative it kick-started in a little corner of Uganda.
“It’s an uphill task but we are working round-the-clock to deliver on our promises to our nation and the world,” says Allan Muhumuza, Vice-President, Marketing &amp; Sales of Kiira, on the company’s mission to build eco-friendly mobility solutions for urban masses in a country of about 40 million.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/homepage/2017/10/09/power-woes-stall-ugandas-rise/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Power Woes Stall Uganda&#8217;s Rise</a>
It all started in 2007 as an extra-curricular activity by a group of students and teachers of the Department of Engineering and Mathematics led by Professor Sandy Stevens Tickodri-Togboa and Paul Isaac Musasizi, currently CEO of Kiira, at Uganda’s Makerere University.
Tickodri-Togboa was head of the department and, together with Musasizi, decided “the paradigm for training university students should be changed, as by the time they graduated, they didn’t have the skills for a working world”.
So they decided to start various extra-curricular projects for students after normal class hours.
Along the way, they were invited to be part of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) initiative with the aim of designing and producing a five-passenger plug-in hybrid electric vehicle targeting the Indian market.
Makerere was “the only participant from Africa”, and as part of the project, eventually developed the two-seater Kiira EV, aptly the color green.
The financing came from the Presidential Initiative Fund for Science and Technology Innovations, and the electric car designed and built in Uganda for the first time was launched by President Yoweri Museveni in 2011.
“The original idea was to use the electric car in the Makerere University campus,” recalls Tickodri-Togboa.
In 2014, the team built Kiira EV SMACK, a sedan its makers say is ‘Africa’s first electric hybrid vehicle’; and thereafter in 2016, the 35-seater Kayoola Solar Bus, again ‘a first in Africa’.
“That we have talent in Uganda has been demonstrated with minimum resources… and we also have very good natural resources,” says Musasizi, the engineer-entrepreneur behind Kiira.
<div id="attachment_34060" style="width: 510px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34060" class=" wp-image-34060" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Uganda-electric-car-e1509349192781-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="375" />A prototype hybrid sedan is being ripped apart at the Kiira headquarters. (Photo supplied)</div>
The government of Uganda, acting through the Uganda Investment Authority, has now allocated 100 acres of land for a vehicle assembly plant expected to open in Jinja, a town in the eastern region of Uganda, in 2018.
In contrast to the used expensive imported vehicles on Uganda’s roads, these will be factory-fresh vehicles made in Uganda.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/entreprenuers/2017/10/27/missionary-built-business-empire/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: The Missionary That Built A Business Empire</a>
Right now, Kiira has the three prototypes, and is looking at 305 units in the first year of production. These will mostly be pick-up trucks and buses.
The idea is to also convert the masses using public transport – mostly the ubiquitous matatus and boda bodas.
“We want to shift the market from 14-seater matatus to this. But most of all we want to reduce traffic and congestion. Our buses will be bigger to seat more people,” says Muhumuza, also an engineer.
“We realized that if we are to solve Africa’s traffic woes, the biggest need was to address public mass mobility, as that’s where the volumes and problems were. But also at the same time provide sustainable green solutions… Our emphasis was on the technology, to show that Africa can build solutions for Africa and these can be futuristic as well.”
At the time it was built, the solar bus cost an estimated $150,000 – it has solar panels on the top that powers lithium-ion batteries. If mass-produced, costs will come down.
“It’s a capital-intensive project and we are open to get tech and financing partners,” says Muhumuza, adding Kiira is in advanced talks with some technological partners.
“We are seeing a niche, a special place in public mobility in urban spaces that can be addressed by green buses,” says Musasizi.
East Africa’s automobile sector seems on track for more news. In neighboring Rwanda, there are reportedly plans to set up a Volkswagen manufacturing plant.
Outside the offices of Kiira, the prototype hybrid sedan is being ripped apart by men in blue overalls and being re-engineered. The car is a mere skeleton of its former self, but its journey on Uganda’s bustling streets, powered by an African sun, may just be about to begin.

On The Road To A Green Future

The internet is a web of opportunities. Many look at YouTube for entertainment, but some look at it for business. The highest paid YouTube channel is PewDiePie who reportedly made $12 million last year, according to FORBES. Meet some Africans who are making money online.
<h4>Caspar Lee</h4>
Not many can say they were self-made millionaires by the age of 20. Caspar Lee can— thanks to YouTube.
“At the age of 16, I started making YouTube videos because I was bored and I could use them to procrastinate my homework way more effectively,” he says on YouTube.
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After about a year and two unsuccessful YouTube channels, he started Dicasp (Director Caspar).
“Six months after starting Dicasp, it became fairly popular, so I traveled to England to meet and collaborate with people like Jack and Finn Harries, Sam Pepper, Marcus Butler, Alfie Deyes and Bertie Gilbert. These collabs dramatically increased my following, and I went back to South Africa with one intention: to make a life out of YouTube because there is nothing I love more.”
And it is what he has done. On December 31, 2012, he moved to England. Thirteen days later, he moved into his own flat.
“A huge part of me wanted to stay in South Africa but I am confident and positive I have made the right decision. Living in London allows me to work with some of the best YouTubers in the world on a day to day basis,” he says.
It is this dedication that has earned Lee over 6.8 million subscribers to his channel and over 649 million views.
This is big money.
According to reports, Lee was banking R5 million ($350,000) a year in 2014 and his net worth was estimated to be $2 million in 2015.
Lee says he has no idea how to describe his channel. He posts anything that comes to mind and takes suggestions from his subscribers.
His main source of income is the advertisements before and after his videos. His fame has also stirred him to acting and book writing.
<h4>Martin Lorton</h4>
Lorton started his IT career in 1991 but he lost his job in 2011.
“I had an idea that it was coming but I didn’t expect it to come so quickly,” he says.
It gave him time to tinker and play. He started sharing videos on YouTube for fun.
“I tried work doing solar power, energy audits and heat pump installations but none of that took off. After not being paid for a small solar-powered project and being rather peeved, I decided to try make money out of running my YouTube channel full time,” he says.
It took off.
He has over 2 million views on one video, over a million on another, and many with hundreds of thousands of views. In July 2013, at 18 months, he was earning about $5,000 per month; about $1,900 from YouTube and the rest from a sponsor.
“I have over 21 million views in total across my channel and average about 500,000 views per month with 620 videos… It’s no longer enough to make a viable full-time income from YouTube alone. In the last 18 months, the advertising rates on YouTube have dropped to a quarter of what they were in 2013 and my sponsor did not renew at the beginning of this year. My income now averages about $1,500 per month.”
Lorton has diversified into affiliate sales through Amazon, earns some money from crowd-funding platform Patreon, produces videos for the channels of other companies and sells advertising space on his website.
“It’s very difficult to start out now on YouTube and make a viable income. You really need to stand out among hundreds of thousands of other channels trying to do the same thing. Your chances of success now are really slim compared to when I started out.”
The channel is for people interested in solar power, electronic measurement equipment, and multimeters. He does reviews, tutorials, how-tos, fun testing, experiments, innovative ideas and solutions.
It may take a while for Lorton to start making as much as he used to, but it is $1,500 he didn’t have.
<h4>Nadav Ossendryver</h4>
Ossendryver has always been fascinated by wildlife. As an obsessive Kruger National Park visitor, his favorite pastime was asking his parents to flag down passing motorists asking them what they had seen. Eventually they tired of this and said no. Ossendryver looked to technology to solve his problem.
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At the age of 15, he founded Latest Sightings, a wildlife crowdsourcing site for visitors who are in the Kruger National Park to report the animals and events that they are seeing live. They report their location, time and sighting to Latest Sightings, which in turn broadcasts it on social media.
“At 15 I was naïve and phoned an app development company to ask them to develop my idea. They quoted R200,000 ($13,000) and I said ‘no thanks’ as I didn’t have that kind of money.”
He spent hours on YouTube teaching himself how to code an iPhone app.
“Within three weeks, I had the app out on the App Store. I used social media to grow a community of around 30,000 in three weeks. All of this for only $10 for the domain name for my site.”
Four years later, Ossendryver has one of the top-viewed YouTube channels in South Africa. With over 307,000 subscribers and over 351 million views worldwide, it makes money.
The dream of an eight-year-old boy may make headlines one day.
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<h4>Theodora Lee</h4>
Caspar Lee’s sister, Theodora Lee, is also making money online. She created her self-titled YouTube channel in 2013, and currently has over 230,000 subscribers and 10 million views. She is known for her advice to the young.
“Currently, I post weekly videos on YouTube that aim to uplift and educate people on coming-of-age topics. I like to chat openly about stuff we all go through so that people can feel less alone and find ways to get through their issues and be the happiest they can be,” she says on her blog.
Last year, she won Best YouTube Channel at the African Blogger Awards and was a finalist for Best African Blogger at the 2016 Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards. She is also working on her debut novel.

YouTube-preneurs

It has been half a year since 195 countries came together in Paris for the adoption of the first-ever universal and legally binding global climate deal. In short, the accord, which will enter into force in 2020, aims to limit global temperature increases to below two degrees Celsius. While some are skeptical, Adnan Amin, the Director General of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), is optimistic.
“Paris has made a huge step-change in people’s expectations regarding the reality of energy transformation,” says Amin.
Amin predicts that the agreement will be a turbo boost for the world’s renewable energy sector.
“The political ambition we achieved in Paris was only possible because renewable energy solutions have become mature enough to be implementable and viable,” says Amin.
The growing value of renewable investments prove this.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-5216" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/002-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />
“Between 2014 and 2015, global investment in new renewable energy capacity jumped from $270 billion to $330 billion. This was before the Paris Agreement. In addition, renewables installed capacity has jumped by 120 percent since 2000, and the costs of technology has fallen dramatically.”
When it comes to alternative energy, Africa is expected to be on the forefront of what Amin calls an energy revolution.
“Renewables deployment in developing and emerging economies has overtaken that in developed markets, including fast-growing economies like the United States,” he says.
“As the electricity demand in mature markets has more or less stabilized, it is soaring in the developing world. The energy demand in Africa for instance, is expected to double, or even triple by 2030,” says Amin.
Amin points to South Africa, Morocco and Kenya as countries to watch.
“The commitment South Africa is making to renewable power generation, and the fact that some projects are delivering solar and wind power that price-wise are more or less on par with coal-generated power, is remarkable.”
While solar PV uses solar panels to capture the sun and convert it into energy, Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) uses mirror structures, known as heliostats, or lenses to concentrate the sun’s rays onto a central point. This concentrated light is converted to heat, and then into electricity.
“South Africa has started to integrate storage components in CSP plants, which is reducing prices even further. CSP is not competitive with coal, South Africa’s main source of electricity, but it is getting there,” Amin says.
He notes that the country is also proving itself in terms of policy innovation.
“I have spent some time with officials there, going through their procurement process. All I can say is that these processes are some of the most rigorous, effective, and transparent I have seen.”
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Then there is Morocco, which recently inaugurated the first phase of the Ouarzazate CSP plant. Upon completion, it will have a 2GW power generation capacity.
“Morocco has gone from very little to no investment in renewables four years ago to $2 billion last year,” says Amin.
“The country has produced some of the most interesting wind and solar projects in the world. Their latest utility-scale wind investment is yielding power that costs $0.03 per Kwh. That is the lowest we have seen anywhere so far,” he says. “The government has bene very clear that this was achieved without incentives and subsidies. Morocco is a game changer in Africa, and is beating everyone else hands down.”
Kenya is doing well too.
“We will see geothermal development move very fast, with very cheap base-load electricity. Kenya is also investing in wind, with the wind farm in the Turkana District going online hopefully later this year,” says Amin, referring to the 250MW wind project, which is the largest in Africa.
Apart from individual countries tapping into renewable energy sources to improve national energy levels, what is more important is the formation of a so-called renewable energy corridor.
“Interconnections have been realized and are being built between markets in eastern and southern Africa,” he explains. “If we can achieve integrated markets with strong regulatory frameworks and transparent policy, we will start attracting financing and investment at a scale we have not seen before in Africa.”
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Going Green  To Light Up  The Continent

Zambian-born Tariq Yusuf knew it was a gamble when his company approached Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe. Yusuf wanted to build a 260-hectare, 100-megawatt (MW) solar power plant. His last venture, the Tara KLamp, a controversial medical tool used for circumcisions in South Africa’s Kwa-Zulu Natal province, hadn’t paid off. Worse still he’d been under fire from the media for years.
Fortune favors the brave and Yusuf bounced back. His family-run business, Intratrek, supplied everything from helicopter parts to medical equipment. Zimbabwe and solar panels were the new frontier.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-2955" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/IMG_0263-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />
“When you are going for such a deal you have your ups and downs. Then one day you get that letter. I was here in Johannesburg and I got a phone call from Wicknell [Chivayo], our partner in Zimbabwe, he screamed ‘we got it, we’ve won the project’,” says Yusuf.
This small slice of business turned with Zimbabwe’s lack of energy. Zimbabwe is energy starved. Since 1999, it has been hampered with rolling black outs and load shedding. The country generates 1,500MW while the demand sits at 2,000MW. Zimbabwe also leans on expensive imports from the Southern Africa Power Pool, a cooperation of national electricity companies, says Chivayo, Managing Director of Intratrek Zimbabwe.
The country also opened up its power to private business in June last year. Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (Zesa) wants private business to build power plants for the state to run. The government has Zim Asset set up as a private IPP company. Zesa intends to increase national power supply by 900MW and build 300MW of renewables by the end of 2018, says Munacho Mutezo, the deputy energy minister. Even more business is set for the long term when Zim Asset wants to upgrade power plants and build new ones.
The sticking point is the money. Zim Asset needs to borrow almost $10 billion to finance the program, and few countries are willing to loan. The delays could make the five-year fix a 30-year nightmare says Zimbabwe Vice President Joice Mujuru.
For Yusuf, its good business for now. Solar farms are quick to build; they have a turnaround period of 10 months, according to Chivayo. By May, Yusuf expects to see the $216-million solar plant ready to go live on the grid.  They have strong backing, China-based CHINT, a behemoth in solar energy worth $30 billion, are the main contractors; their funders are Afreximbank. Intratrek Zimbabwe threw $3 million into the investment.
“For me &#8211; a 27-year-old &#8211; this was a game changer; it’s something that can help a lot of people in Africa and it has put us on the map,” says Yusuf.
Yusuf’s plant will harness the rays of the sun for the next 50 years. Not a bad reward for taking a chance where few had risked before.

Tag: Solar Power

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

Renewable Power Surge In Africa Faces A Shortout: Not Enough Workers

On The Road To A Green Future

YouTube-preneurs

Going Green To Light Up The Continent

Finding Light in the dark