President
Radhika is based in Nairobi where she oversees global business development at Greenlight Planet, a company that designs and distributes high quality, affordable solar home energy solutions for under-electrified consumers in 40 countries. She joined Greenlight Planet’s Mumbai office in 2009 to expand the company’s presence to African and other Asian markets before moving to Kenya in 2012 to launch its flagship office in Africa. Prior to joining Greenlight, Radhika built a career in business development and consulting in the healthcare sector in the US. She also served as an Americorps VISTA volunteer focusing on public education reform in NYC and holds a BA in International Relations from Tufts University.
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Board of Directors
Emilien is CEO of SureChill since August 2021. He started his career at Ernst and Young. He very quickly moved into a series of commercial strategic roles, initially with Procter and Gamble, then working with companies ranging from small start-ups to large multinationals. Emilien has significant experience developing businesses in Africa, most recently building up a Senegal and Mali business for PEG Africa, one of the major providers of PayGo solar equipment in West Africa. During his time there, he grew the company from 5 employees to 200 enabling them to provide 20,000 households with life-changing solar equipment, having achieved profitability in the first year of operations. Emilien is truly a world citizen, having lived, worked, and studied in 8 different countries and has travelled to over 100 countries across all continents. His first African role was a director-level position with Flour Mills of Nigeria from 2015 to 2018. He is passionate about the off-grid energy sector and is delighted to represent SureChill on the GOGLA Board of Directors.
Grégory Durand is Director of Business Development, Emerging Markets, at BioLite since April 2020.
He has an extensive experience of seventeen years in energy access and solar off-grid activities. He started his career at Total (one of the world’s top-ranked oil and gas companies) in 2005 where he held several positions as a Project Manager and Business Developer for off-grid and energy access programs. From 2005 to 2018 he worked on rural electrification projects (JVs with EDF) in Mali, Morocco, and South Africa (enabled access to electricity to ~100k households across the 3 countries), and on the foundations and development of the energy access social business program inside Total (that delivered millions of solar lanterns to end users across Africa and Asia while incubating new business models).
In 2018, he joined GOGLA, the global association for the off-grid solar energy industry, as Director of Operations, where he was in charge of Membership, Communication, Events, Data, HR, and Finance.
Since 2020, Gregory Durand leads a 12 person team and oversees BioLite’s existing and potential distribution partners. BioLite is a leading designer and manufacturer of off-grid energy products across sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.
Gregory is a graduate from the ESME Sudria Engineering School (Paris) in 2005
Since 2016, Zuwa pioneered and has been a leading brand in solar pay-as-you-go in Malawi. Zuwa’s mission is to empower people to live better and businesses to succeed by providing affordable solar solutions and other life-changing products. We achieve this using credit tools and technology to determine appropriate payment plans.
Jones Ntaukira is co-founder and Managing Director for Zuwa Energy and is based in Lilongwe, Malawi. He has over 12 years of experience spanning international development, consultancy, and manufacturing. Prior to co-founding Zuwa, Jones was Country Director for Empower Malawi, where he spent 6 years using the design thinking approach to design and lead the implementation of rural development programs in Malawi. He has also worked as a consultant and resource for youth and women entrepreneurship development for reputable organizations like SADC, British Council, Social Enterprise Academy, Gracia Marcel Trust, and Segal Family Foundation, and currently is on the board of strategic advisors for Flame Tree Initiative (USA).
d.light was founded in 2007 and is an early pioneer in the off-grid solar space. The company was driven by a mission to eradicate the kerosene lantern through the introduction of its first product line of affordable, high quality solar lanterns. Through continuous innovation the d.light product offering has evolved from one simple affordable, durable, solar lantern to a complete range of multi-use portable lights, Pay-Go solar home systems (SHS), a back-end Pay-Go software platform, and energy efficient DC appliances, enabling customers to leapfrog the grid with holistic energy solutions. d.light helped to establish GOGLA in 2012, and continues to play a central role in protecting the interests of end-users and Lighting Global quality-certified companies in multiple spheres.
Nedjip co-founded d.light in 2007. d.light has been a pioneer in off-grid solar energy and has impacted over 100 million people through a wide range of affordable solar products. Ned has been recognized by Forbes as one of the world’s top thirty social entrepreneurs.
Sarah Bieber leads strategic partnerships for the energy sector at Acumen, a nonprofit global venture fund that invests in early-stage companies tackling poverty. Over the last 12 years, Acumen has invested $24.3 million across 24 companies, which then raised $269 million in follow-on capital and impacted 109 million lives across 60+ countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
Acumen has a long history of providing patient investment capital for pioneering off-grid energy companies. It also adds value through technical assistance, management support, talent development, and a Lean Data approach to impact measurement and customer insights. Acumen sees active participation in the GOGLA Board as a unique opportunity to ensure that off-grid energy companies remain focused on providing access to electricity in the poorest markets.
Sarah, who previously led the Scaling Off-Grid Energy Grand Challenge at USAID/Power Africa, is a fixture in the off-grid energy industry. Her public- and private-sector experiences give her a unique perspective into strategic early-stage investments, market acceleration, and broader policy efforts
Sylviah Mwaura brings a wealth of experience and a diverse skill set that will contribute to the continued growth and success of our company. With her background in Finance, Credit Risk, and Transactional Advisory, we are confident that she will provide valuable insights and guidance in driving our organisation forward. She kindly agreed to take the role of Treasurer, so with her extensive background she will add value to GOGLA in helping us govern our financial and operational management.
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Advisory Board
Anita is currently a Senior Director at Sustainable Energy for All. She leads on the programme delivery of the Universal Energy Facility, a multi-donor funded results-based financing facility for the development of renewable energy projects across Sub-Saharan Africa, towards bridging the energy access and reliability gap, with a focus on productive use and sustainable impact on lives and businesses.
Prior to joining SEforALL, Anita was the head of the Project Management Unit of the Nigeria Electrification Project (NEP), with a $550 Million facility jointly funded by the World Bank and the African Development Bank. ~$120 million was leveraged in private capital, over 1 million connections were achieved, impacting over 5 million residents, MSMEs and 26 healthcare facilities. She was also the project coordinator of the Energizing Education Programme, which led to 7 tertiary educational institutions being energized.
She has experience working with senior government officials, having worked as a member of the Advisory Power Team in the Office of the Vice President of the F.R of Nigeria and a Technical Assistant (Legal) to the Minister of Power.
Anita is a member of the; knowledge network of the United Nations Office of the Special Adviser on Africa (UN-OSAA), Technical Advisory Group of the World Bank’s Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP), Advisory Boards of GOGLA and the Africa Mini-Grid Acceleration Programme (AMAP) under Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa (SEFA) at the African Development Bank and the Expert Advisory Group of the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTI).
Claudia Schwartz is Power Africa’s sector lead for the distributed solar sector, managing the initiative’s partnerships across off-grid solar and productive use of energy. She provides subject matter expertise on issues in the sector, provides technical oversight to large-scale funding agreements and helps to design new funding programs. She co-leads the initiative’s climate working group and is also the lead for the agriculture-energy nexus and humanitarian energy.
Previously she led the energy portfolio at the U.S. African Development Foundation, another federal government agency, where she worked for six years. Prior to this she was involved in the start-up of a solar company based in Somaliland and worked for the international NGO Pact in Kenya and Ethiopia.
She holds a master’s degree in international business and development economics from the Fletcher School at Tufts University, where she wrote her master’s thesis on private electricity infrastructure investment. She holds a bachelor’s degree magna cum laude from Brown University.
Geoffrey is an Investment Director and Head of the Energy Access and Efficiency team at British International Investment, providing debt financing solutions for decentralised energy and resource efficiency. In addition to providing catalytic finance to companies, Geoffrey is engaged in cross-cutting initiatives to promote the sustainable development of the energy access sector.
Prior to joining BII, Geoffrey was a Chief Investment Officer in the private sector operations department at the African Development Bank where he was responsible for leading teams in corporate and project finance transactions in a variety of sectors, including energy, agribusiness and financial services. Geoffrey holds an MBA from HEC Paris.
Wim Jonker Klunne has over 25 years of experience in renewable energy and energy efficiency project implementation in southern and east Africa. He has worked on a wide range of energy implementation, research and capacity-building projects on behalf of the AfDB, World Bank, UNDP, GEF, EU, national governments, private sector, and research institutions.
Wim was the Lead Coordinator of the EEP Africa Trust Fund, a regional fund that aims to increase energy access in 15 countries in southern and east Africa. The fund provides seed funding to early-stage renewable energy and energy efficiency projects, including many off-grid solar companies.
Wim is the coordinator of the Household Solar Funders Group, which brings together 60+ organisations active in the field of household solar in Africa with the aim of facilitating joint activities to advance the sector.
At the Shell Foundation Wim is responsible for the Market Institution Facility, an initiative to provide long-term core funding to Market Institutions so they can execute their important work on the creation of a viable market for distributed renewable energy.
