AWARD YEAR
2017
CATEGORY
Community
GOALS
Innovative Financial System
KEYWORDS
solar power, Mobile Money
COUNTRY
United Rep. of Tanzania
DESIGNED BY
Richard Awuor, Cellulike Tanzania Limited
WEBSITE
https://www.facebook.com/celluliketz/
Cellulike Tanzania Limited
PLATFORM FOR MICRO-GRID SOLAR DISTRIBUTION
A micro-grid solar power distribution system on a Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) model that runs on Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) platform (as opposed to mobile app: currently used); driven by village agents to eliminate scalability barriers: mobile money, smart phones & internet.
Tanzania has >10milion off-grid households yet less than 200,000 have been connected with the solar home systems in the last 5years due to use of PAYG platform that is not easily scalable. This USSD solution enables us to work through village agents in their own localities hence scale-up of PAYG solar to as many low income households is easy. The households today use kerosene lamps & candles for light. Solar Home systems provide clean energy. Fumes emitted by kerosene lamps & candles are major cause of various respiratory deseases in rural areas. This solar system help prevent these situations.