ResurgeAfrique is back to the drawing board. We are talking to more potential partners and will be carefully selecting our partners, going forward. We are selecting partners who understand:

• Distribution is the question. You can make the best of products but what good is it if no one buys it or you cannot get it into the hands of the people that need it. Distribution is the big question. We need creative, game-changing distribution strategies.
  
• Think solutions, not products. No one wants the burden of a lighting device. Everyone wants lighting, everyone wants power and energy. Everyone wants to flip a switch. Do not make the mistake of thinking even village dwelling Africans will be satisfied with a lantern that is only in some respects an improvement on kerosene lanterns. They are not looking for lanterns but for lighting.
• Think beyond lighting. Think power. Our research even in remote villages, shows that people are not satisfied with just lighting their rooms. They need refrigerators, they need access to the outside world through TVs and Radios. Lighting needs to be seen only as a first step.
• Eliminate the aid mentality. The aid mentality pushes products in small quantities one village at a time. In Africa, we are talking of providing solutions for close to a billion people. We need to be thinking like the cell phone companies and be asking ourselves, how do we provide affordable power to 150 million Nigerians and do it very quickly?
• This is not a time to be local. This is a time to be global and solutions must be designed, business models need to be created to enable quick widespread adoption. We cannot even begin to address the need if we do not think beyond a few villages to thousands of villages and hundreds of millions of people.
• Leverage the entrepreneurial energy in Africa. Sustainable and successful ventures in Africa must tap into that energy. Most Africans either do not have a regular job or have very low paying jobs. How do they survive? They are entrepreneurs. That inherent quality we have imbibed in response to adversity is unparalleled and is there to be leveraged.
• In Africa, we like deals. A social enterprise going into Africa needs to find a way to combine million dollar deal making with grassroots benefit. Deal making needs to go hand in hand with desire to help the poor, or else your project will become stillbirth.
• Africa is not a dumping ground. Previous generations of Africans may have accepted the dumping of fake or poorly manufactured products because they did not know better and they had few options. Not anymore. You will fail woefully if your product or solution is based on an assumption that you are selling to people who are clueless. Going forward, products will need to meet stringent quality and environmental standards. 21st century Africa is not 19th century Africa.
• Africans have primary responsibility for Africa. Any sustainable initiative needs to have active involvement of the right Africans, who understand the terrain and the culture. Do not think you can exploit them, prepare to partner with them.
• Prepare to be wrong. Africa is not Europe or Asia or Latin America. Prepare to junk what worked in North America or what you learnt in B-school.

We conducted our survey in South West Nigeria late last year and have completed our analysis, in conjunction with our partners Nuru Energy. Providing sustainable and clean energy solutions in the remote areas is a no-brainer. The villagers presently spend high amounts on kerosene, because they have no better, readily available options. Interestingly, there are many options but kerosene is still the winner. There is the relatively new local lamp made from Compact Discs, known as "Yar'adua" in South-West Nigeria, named after the late Nigerian President. But our survey and interactions with users show that while "Yar'adua" lamps (shown above) are very cheap, they are not durable and are battery-intensive, which would end up being expensive on the long run in addition to contributing to environmental pollution. Surprisingly, a number of people also use the flash lights on their cell phones, for lighting at night. Kerosene remains the winner, but it seems they will try whatever new product comes along in the hope that something healthier, less expensive, brighter and more available than kerosene comes along.

We are going ahead with our solution and the next phase is the commencement of a pilot with a number of micro-entrepreneurs who will among other things serve as "generators" for people in their community. Our model involves creating employment at the village level and making sure that a significant percentage of the thousands of dollars that leave each village annually to purchase fuel stays to fuel the local economy going forward. It also involves retaining some of the characteristics of the present kerosene model that make it sustainable - possibility of incremental purchases, centralized sourcing at the village level, etc. The end user does not need technical knowledge for the solution to work, the micro-entrepreneur gladly holds that expertise and is compensated for it. For the end user, the solution is plug and play. We anticipate a model that is simple and elegant.

At the moment, we consider it wiser to wait until after the Nigerian Elections to commence our pilot. In the interim, we are putting together a training package for entrepreneurs, working on establishing partnership with financial institutions with integrity and other necessary details. One of the challenges at the moment is finding a micro-finance institution that is really into micro finance in the remote areas and not merely operating in Lagos or any of the other big cities.