Elephant Energy

Welcome to the first entry in Elephant Energy’s blog! We’re thrilled to create a new communication channel that will keep our supporters connected to our work from the Navajo Nation and in Namibia featuring posts by a variety of writers spearheading our work in the field.

This inaugural blog post comes in the midst of one of the busiest and most exciting times in Elephant Energy’s history. In Namibia, the end of 2013 marked a year of incredible growth, thanks to our first large grant from the Energy and Environment Partnership for Southern & East Africa (EEP S&EA).This grant helped Elephant Energy to scale our solar product distribution model from one shop and fifteen rural sales agents in the Caprivi Region to an additional thirty-five businesses and sales agents across six additional regions in the country’s north (see map). We brought on four new Regional Sales managers who carried out our first large-scale marketing campaign which focuses on radio and a strategic ground campaign in towns and rural villages across the north. These two components, coupled with positive word-of-mouth endorsements, have been critical in establishing Elephant Energy as a trusted name in solar products, and in delivering products and educational information about solar energy the critical “last mile” to off-grid rural villages.

Going to scale with a business model targeted to poor customers and in a country with one of the lowest population densities of any country on earth has been no easy feat. That we’ve emerged from this year of tremendous growth stronger than ever is a testament to the tireless work of our exceptional team of Namibian staff leading our efforts on the ground.

Next month marks the beginning of a partnership with the United States Agency for Development (USAID) and our partner, divi, Inc. (see press release). This grant will support the doubling of Elephant Energy’s distribution network and the integration of divi, Inc.’s pay-to-own solar products into our product line. divi, Inc. is a Colorado-based company that produces solar products enabled with cutting-edge technology that allow low-income customers to pay for their solar products in small, weekly installments. The truly innovative feature of divi’s technology lies in the ability to transfer credits from “lamp to lamp” – a feature that allows entrepreneurial customers to sell credits to their neighbors, thus providing new streams of income to rural areas and supporting the viral distribution of solar products.

Amid the focus to grow our impact to a bigger scale than ever, I reflect upon the stories of our customers who remind me of the importance of the task at hand. Today, I’m reminded of Sambueko, an Elephant Energy customer who makes his living playing his guitar on the streets of a bustling border town in Namibia. When I was in Namibia last month, Sambueko asked to meet as he had written a song about his solar light he wanted to play for us. “I thank my guitar for this gift of solar,” he told us. “I love my solar lamp. I can even charge my radio with it so I can listen to music all the time. I am now saving up to buy a lamp for my wife so she can breastfeed at night.”  

As we gear up for another banner year of expansion, we’ll be thinking of Sambueko and singing his song.