Habiba is a clean energy entrepreneur. She founded Sosai Renewable Energies Company in 2010, after attending the Partnership for Clean Indoor Air in Uganda as a speaker. One of the sessions she attended was about the negative health impact of kerosene lanterns. “This was a new angle that I hadn’t considered. I knew about the carbon emissions, that improved cook stoves are better for the environment, but I didn’t know that about two hours of breathing in the fumes from an open fire or kerosene is equivalent to smoking one pack of cigarettes, I didn’t know. It shocked me and made me think of how many packs of cigarettes my family had smoked through the years working in our roadside restaurant.”
Habiba’s sister had died in 2006 from a possible respiratory disease. “If I could, I wanted to stop this problem from happening to other women, so I bought 10 lamps from Barefoot Power as I left the session”. She sold them to women street vendors who worked at night using polluting kerosene lamps for 3h at a time. They loved the product, so she ordered more. From lamps, Sosai Renewable Energies Company expanded into SHS, cookstoves, productive use and refrigerators with a network of women sales agents selling to women customers.
Some of Habiba’s challenges have been starting in new markets, unfavourable legislation and customers not paying. Default rates with PAYGo solar systems were a turning point for her: “I had taken out loans for the first time, and sold a lot of products, but customers were not paying, so keeping up with my loan became a huge issue. I could either close down my business or find ways to make it.”
She started trying to access grants via productive use and mini-grids, finding the space between what the communities need and what the grantors are funding. As an example, an organization was funding projects related to women with tropical diseases from multiple angles. Habiba pitched that women could set up clean energy businesses to make a better living. “This was not a pocket of funds allocated specifically to renewables, but it is imperative for entrepreneurs to find their space, not wait. Any funding can be for renewables if you look at it from the right angle.”
Sometimes, it can be frustrating to see foreign companies come into the market with millions in funding when she’s struggling to raise 200.000. She sees ways of collaborating between manufacturers and distributors with local knowledge, but there are challenges because sometimes the manufacturers just work directly with sales agents and build their distribution networks, especially from the ones built by her kind of company when they should partner to achieve growth.
The path forward is clear for Habiba because she sees a lot of work still to be done in Nigeria since energy access is not yet satisfactory: “Energy can solve a lot of problems. Thanks to a refrigerator, a woman that has nothing can own a business, make a living, earn money and provide an education for her kids. Those kids will also have a better reference and be less vulnerable to bad influences in the future.”
Habiba says she is very happy to have chosen this path in her career because for the first time she feels fulfilment especially when she goes into the communities and the joy people show for the work she does. “I would not trade this life for anything else, besides I don’t know better” she shares.