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Senegalese-American
singer Akon (right, in suit) during a visit in Pahou,
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Senegalese-American
singer Akon received a special welcome when he arrived in Benin in August, the
last stop on his tour of six African countries as part of his Akon Lighting
Africa initiative. Benin’s energy minister and other officials greeted him in the
small, leather chair-adorned VIP lounge at the Cotonou airport. A fleet of
gleaming white Ford Everests awaited his entourage outside, while he was
directed to a black Chrysler.
During the
following two days, the on-the-go motorcade would keep its police escorts
busy — from meetings with the prime minister and the energy minister to an
event at the U.S. Embassy and a small ceremony to unveil a solar street lamp in
a semirural area not far from the capital city.
Thione Niang and
Samba Bathily, Akon’s business partners in the Akon Lighting Africa initiative,
joined him on the trip. The roles of all three are clear. Akon is the
brand, Niang’s focus is on youth engagement and helping make political
introductions, and Bathily is the businessman.
While Akon’s name
is a driving force in the initiative, and he’s involved in many of the
decisions, he’s never thought of himself as an entrepreneur. He didn’t even
know the definition until recently, he said. But he’s always had an
entrepreneurial spirit — from buying 12 packs of Snickers bars to resell at a
markup from his locker at school to the illegal business opportunities he later
chased that landed him in jail.
Back then, though,
his motivations were different — he just wanted to be rich.
In large part
because of his fame, the roughly two-year-old Akon Lighting Africa
initiative has drawn a lot of media attention, but also generated a fair amount
of curiosity and skepticism. Some of the criticism seems to stem from a lack of
understanding of its brand and purpose.
Devex spent time
traveling with the leaders of the organization and speaking with each in an
effort to answer some of the lingering questions. While the the team touts
rapid growth, especially in the past year, they’ve also been working to refine
the initiative’s identity and priorities as it expands across the African
continent.
Early days
Akon Lighting
Africa was born out of a conversation a few years ago.
The initiative is
designed to bring attention to the issue of energy poverty in Africa and the
massive need for increased generation. Its current focus is on demonstration
projects of solar street lamps and home solar kits in several countries.
- Thione Niang,
co-founder of Akon Lighting Africa
To date, the solar
street lamp business, by way of government contracts and tenders, has been the
enterprise’s main business. Those installations and contracts are managed
through the company Solektra, which was founded by Samba Bathily, and serves as
the business arm of the initiative, which doesn’t actually implement the power
deals.
The three partners
didn’t know each other when Niang, who has played a role in Democratic politics
in the U.S. and runs the Give1Project, invited Akon to speak at an event.
Afterward, the two spoke about what they could do “to rewrite the story of
Africa,” said Niang, who splits his time between Washington, D.C. and Senegal.
Niang felt he could
harness the power of his brand — including his 52.5 million Facebook followers
and 5.8 million Twitter followers — to make an impact. As the two discussed
where to invest over the next few months, they kept returning to the same
issue: the lack of energy.
“When you talk
about health, there is no health without energy, no education, no commerce, no
trade,” Niang said. “So we said we were going to start from there.”
Niang knows
firsthand the challenges of “racing the sun” to complete homework, as does Akon,
who spent part of his childhood in Senegal living in a house with no
electricity.
Samba Bathily, with
his understanding of energy, finances and business, whom Niang had met
previously, completed the partnership picture.
Bathily’s Solektra
has thus far installed 100,000 street lights as part of the initiative. About
five percent were installed as demonstration projects and the rest primarily
through government contracts or tenders. Each light costs between $800 to
$3,000 depending on size, capacity and reach.
Solektra has worked
out a deal with its Chinese suppliers for a $1 billion line of credit, which
they use as part of a financing package they offer to governments as they bid
for contracts or tenders. The credit line enables governments to pay the cost
in installments over several years.
“If you ask most of
them to pay one time they cannot do a good project,” Bathily said.
Akon Lighting
Africa says it has reached more than 1 million people to date, which does not
directly translate to 1 million more people with energy access. The number is
calculated as the total of those impacted through their projects — for example
citizens of a town or village that now has street lamps.
Stumbling blocks
One of the
demonstration projects is a village about a 45-minute drive, at least half on
unpaved, barely-there roads, outside of Nairobi, Kenya. There, a row of solar
street lamps lines one main road. The schools have solar street lamps too, as
do the church, an orphanage and a few other public buildings. There are a few
locals who have been trained to repair them should anything go wrong, but as
the sun fades, they turn on like clockwork.
Akon Lighting
Africa says it targets areas that lack access to energy and so the village was
chosen in part because it was off-grid. However, within six months of the
installation of solar lighting in the community, the Kenyan government extended
the electric grid to the area, which raises questions about
coordination. On the evening of Devex’s August visit, though, it appeared
no one was out to make use of the lighted paths or other gathering places.
Still, ALA staff
say the demonstration project has made a big difference in safety in the
community and improved student productivity in schools. The location was chosen
by government officials, as it is for all their work, and a lengthy community
meeting and consultation determined the best locations for the street lamps.
Another potential
challenge with this demonstration project and others is that ALA has
distributed free home solar lighting systems, which could be problematic in a
market where businesses are trying to sell similar products.
But the team
is learning as they go and tackling challenges along the way, Niang said, one
of which is spending a lot of energy educating people and making their case,
especially to governments.
That’s been the
only frustration that Akon has experienced thus far, he said — trying to
explain to certain politicians what it is they’re doing and how ALA approaches
things.
“People are used
to doing things the way that they have always done it and when we come
with our pitch and our approach, it’s always completely opposite and very
different than what they’re used to,” Akon said.
It’s also meant
relatively little sleep — spending every day, or every other day, in a
different country doesn’t really allow for it. But somehow they still find time
for fun, which helps break up the marathon of meetings.
When local
musicians entertained the crowd of young people at an event in Benin, Akon
danced with them on the stage, as did Niang. Bathily, seemingly the most
serious, looked on.
Certainly Akon’s
celebrity plays a role in the meetings and access the initiative gets; he
understands the skepticism around celebrity engagement and the questions of
whether this is a vanity project.
“I was one of those
people that looked at all the other brands coming in like, ‘What’s happening?
Where’s the money going? Where’s the progress?’” he said, adding that he’s
always been skeptical of organizations that don’t deliver for the communities
they claim to help.
Akon is much more
interested in action than talk, he said.
Working with others
Akon
Lighting Africa is looking for partners and recognizes that working together
is the only way to effect significant change, the partners told Devex,
although some stakeholders in the solar energy sector have questioned its
business model, intentions and true commitment to partnership.
There’s
no lack of confidence within the team — all three partners mentioned being sons
of the African continent and attribute the initiative and Solektra’s business
success to their local knowledge of how to get things done. But perhaps in that
there’s also a bit of hubris — a sense that they know better, sometimes better
than others working in the field.
Though
some companies have been working on powering Africa for five or 10 years, Akon
Lighting Africa has “probably accomplished more than every last one of them
combined in less than two years,” Akon said.
It’s
a belief, Niang said, fueled by the evidence of a string of failed
projects where an outside company has come in, installed solar lighting, made
their money and left only to let it crumble and break.
“Many
people come in Africa with many projects and they cash out and there’s no
sustainability,” Niang said. “We learned we need to ... make sure what we’re
doing has continuity.”
When
ALA was getting off the ground, the team talked to everybody involved in an
effort to best understand the market, the challenges and who was involved, the
partners said.
“You
know what we understood? Some of them think that they have like the monopoly on
Africa,” Bathily said. “I have discussions with them, Africa is not a monopoly
for nobody, we need a solution. Everybody should join hands to bring the
solution.”
But
Niang said that Akon Lighting Africa has learned a lot from its partners and is
looking to build a coalition of organizations working on the issue. He’s been
meeting with Power Africa officials to figure out how they might fit into that
U.S. government initiative and work together.
“We’re
looking to partner with whoever delivers. We don’t really mind if you’re small
or if you’re big — if you’re small we can help you grow and if you’re big
you can help us grow. The unity is what’s going to keep Africa in a position
where it can grow and be sustainable in the future,” Akon said.
Part
of the reason Akon attended the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Nairobi,
Kenya, in July and has been involved in Sustainable Energy for All meetings in
New York is to learn from the various entrepreneurs and development
organizations working in the space.
“The
best way to recruit is to be in those kind of events and be a part of those
things to see what they’re dealing with, what they’re developing, what they’re
trying to contribute to the growth of Africa,” he said.
It’s
also about charting the road ahead and determining how decisions made in those
forums may impact their work.
What’s
ahead
The
organization will launch the Solektra Solar Academy in Mali in December, and in
the long term is looking to become the utility company for rural energy in
Africa.
Early
on, Akon Lighting Africa realized that finding good human resources was also a
challenge, so they began offering scholarships and training to locals to
understand the market and the technology. This led to the decision to launch a
solar academy, a training school specifically for solar power-related
professions to build a cadre of knowledgeable Africans who can design systems,
install and repair them, and build the future solar power businesses for the
continent.
They’re
not the first to recognize the need for talent — Off Grid Electric, a home
solar electricity system company based in Tanzania, started a local academy to
train potential future staff as they expand.
And while Akon Lighting
Africa has focused on streetlights — in part to bring awareness, but also
because it was an easy entry point with few regulations involved — it plans to
move into developing “minigrids” in the next year. It is also working in
partnership with U.S. universities, German researchers, Chinese equipment
providers and some NGOs to help build the ecosystem for minigrids and help
encourage government policies that would lead to business growth in that area.
And
they want to move fast, both because of the need and because that’s what people
expect, Akon said.
“We’re
not politicians so we don’t move like politicians, but we move like people who
need for real action,” he said.
It’s
clear that this is a deeply personal pursuit for Akon, one that symbolizes a
break from the past.
“Where
I’m at in my life, what I’m doing is definitely, clearly not about the money,
it’s the feeling you get helping other people,” he said. “You feel more
complete because now you start to understand your worth and more than anything
you start to realize what you’re here for, your purpose.”
The
change is demonstrated by the initiative and echoed by his partners, who
strongly believe in the power of a new generation of young Africans.
“Solar
can be an answer for energy solutions, not only for Africa but for the rest of
the world. We have to drive that,” Niang said.
It
may have been his celebrity that put the initiative on the map, but Akon is
determined to deliver. He uses music as an escape, he said, and keeps it mostly
separate while traveling for Akon Lighting Africa; but he’s sure recent
experiences will be reflected in upcoming work — from the positive tone to the
world sound. His audience for Akon Lighting Africa, meanwhile, is watching
closely.
