IXL Social Enterprise Case Studies Energy January 2012 | Page 10

Revolutionizing the way to make energy affordable for everyone

SunnyMoney has had a hard time building
scale
SunnyMoney currently sell lights in four countries
At present SunnyMoney operates in four African
countries: Tanzania (43 million people) Kenya
(41 milllion people), Malawi (16 milllion
people), and Zambia (14 milllion people), which
have a combined population of close to 114
million people.17
Between 2006 and 2011, SunnyMoney reached
a total of 215,000 households and sold 46,000
lamps. In 2010/11, it generated $400,000 in
revenues, of which the sales of solar lamps
accounted for 79 percent.
To build sales, SunnyMoney has been
experimenting with a number of different sales,
marketing and distribution models but with
limited success.
In Tanzania SunnyMoney has trained and
developed door-to-door local entrepreneurs.
They hired teams to drive from village to village
in off-road vehicles to demonstrate how the
lights work: it took five teams seven months to
reach 80 percent of Tanzania, but along the way
SunnyMoney lost time and money to equipment
breakdowns and personnel changes, adding
significantly to the expense.
SunnyMoney has also sold lights through various
wholesalers and other social enterprises and
organizations, including foundations. In one
instance, for example, they sold lamps to the
Anne K. Taylor Fund, which in turn sold the
SunnyMoney lamps to the Maasai in Kenya and
northern Tanzania in order to raise revenues to
fund their community programs.
SunnyMoney has also used more traditional fastmoving consumer goods retail channels, but with
little success. Shopkeepers have little incentive to
keep the lamps on hand since there is little to no
demand for them from their customers.
In Malawi, SunnyMoney has been working
with Concern Universal (CU), an international
development
organization
that
enables
community-led development primarily in
Africa.18
In an effort to promote entrepreneurship in
sustainable energy products as a way to combat
deforestation and climate change, CU sponsors
entrepreneurs who produce and sell energyefficient clay stoves. In July 2009, SunnyMoney
started supplying CU with their micro-solar
products which are then distributed through the
existing network of clay stove entrepreneurs.
More than 600 lamps have been sold this way.

SunnyMoney is also starting to work with CU’s
microfinance organization (CUMO) to nominate
and capitalize these potential entrepreneurs.
In another instance of partnering, at the Satemwa
Fair Trade Tea Estate in Malawi, the Joint Body
of the Workers Council, representing workers’
interests and having budget authorization, sought
advice on providing micro-solar products to tea
workers in the estate. By the end of Q1 2010,
SunnyMoney had supplied all 1,800 permanent
tea workers with micro-solar products. With
a constant in-flow of seasonal workers,
SunnyMoney is discussing the prospect of
providing products to new entrants, or additional
products to the local community.
In Kenya, SunnyMoney works with Smart Solar,
who in turn is a local distributor for Barefoot
Power, a for-profit enterprise with an extensive
distribution network that makes its products
available within Uganda through a network of
solar entrepreneurs and works with other social
enterprises in Kenya, Tanzania and India to help
distribute its products. Barefoot Power provides
SunnyMoney with the majority of its product
range, including its popular Firefly Mobile and
Powapack models. It works with other suppliers
such as d.light to provide the smaller S1 models
and Greenlight Planet for the larger models.
SunnyMoney has had success distributing
through local schools
Of all the channels tried, only one has
demonstrated the promise of providing the scale
needed to reach SunnyMoney’s ambitious goal.
Mafia Island, Tanzania is 30km long and 15km
wide and lies just off the mouth of the Rufiji
River in Southern Tanzania. Most of its 45,000
residents make their income fishing from the sea.
Roads are rugged with few vehicles; everyone
walks or rides bicycles.
Very few residents living outside the district
capital have access to electricity or running
water. Work stops at sundown, and children
lucky enough to go to school sit beside flickering
candles or smoking kerosene lamps to do their
homework in the evenings.
It was here, in what has been described as “one
of the least developed parts of an undeveloped
country” that SunnyMoney witnessed one of its
most surprising successes.19 Battery powered
LED lights were SunnyMoney’s biggest
competitor for Mafia Island customers, although
product quality and battery capacity are low.
The entry price point for an LED battery light
in the Mafia Island market was TSH2,000
(approximately US$1.25), with very poor quality
batteries selling for 10 cents to 20 cents each.

10