By Lee Forest Konstanty, Millennium Promise Lantern Consultant

On one side of the globe there is a manufacturer producing energy efficient solar lanterns. On the other side of the globe there is someone who could greatly benefit from owning one. The trick is finding a way to connect the two in a sustainable fashion. In March 2010, I set out to do just that; help to bring efficient lighting to Millennium Village Communities in Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and Mali. I really had no idea when I began just how complicated developing a sustainable supply chain could be, and the reality is that I still learn something new every day. Through a series of posts I would like to take you through the work that I, in conjunction with the local Millennium Village Project Site teams, have been doing to achieve our goal of a sustainable supply chain for solar lantern technologies. This post will focus on working with community vendors, one of my favorite parts of the job.

Lantern Introduction:

Travel to any market in or around an MVP site and there you will find hundreds of different flashlights and lanterns. They come in every shape and size and nearly every imaginable color. Some of the most interesting lanterns available have colorful pictures, plastic flowers in their casings, and, to my surprise, flashlights that blink different colors while they play you a song. The market is filled with distinct lighting options; their only commonality being their incredibly low quality.

My first task when arriving in a community is to take different brands of solar lanterns that have been quality-tested in the Earth Institute labs in New York, introduce them to the communities, and describe to communities all of the ways in which the solar lanterns differ from the low quality imports available in the markets. It would be nearly impossible to go door-to-door showing the lanterns to every household, so we needed to find a creative approach. We found that the best way to get the word into remote parts of the MVP clusters is to approach people already in the business of selling flashlights at their community shops or through community associations that focus on clean energy.

The first time I arrived in an MV site, I walked to Vivian’s shop in the Bonsaaso cluster lanterns in-hand. Vivian has a small shop in a highly trafficked location and sells household goods, including lanterns and flashlights. My plan was to show her the lanterns, and ask her if she would be interested in keeping them in her shop for week for people to stop and see. My MVP colleagues and I were graciously invited to take a seat and show her what we had brought. No sooner did we have the solar lanterns out of the boxes, than a crowd began to form. Nearly 20 villagers spilled out of Vivian’s shop and while we showed the growing crowd the lanterns we had brought with us, the questions began.

“How long does it stay lit?”

“How much do they cost?”

“Where are they made?”

After everyone had had a chance to see the lanterns, we asked Vivian if she would be willing to keep four different lantern models, and allow people who visited her shop to see them and to decide which one they liked the best and might consider purchasing. She was happy to oblige.

Since my first day at Vivian’s shop, I have taken lanterns to vendors and associations throughout sites in Ghana and Nigeria, and the reaction is nearly always the same: gracious shop owners, crowds of people, questions about quality and price and excitement.

Lantern Displays:

After a vendor or association member has agreed to display a lantern, our program supplies a set of lanterns for them to use and display as they see fit. Some people light their storefronts, others walk the streets displaying the lantern to neighbors and friends, and most actually use the lanterns in their stores and homes in the evening. The most important thing is that people are using them as they see fit; After all, everyone needs lighting for different reasons. After roughly a week, we go back into the communities to collect the lanterns and ask the vendors and community members for their impressions. The results are often striking, and in cases people describe things that we had never even considered. In one village, community members did not like the way the manufacturing of the solar lantern had left a slight seam in the plastic. Others said they really preferred the lanterns that weighed more. In one case, community members charged the lanterns and pit them against each other to see which one would stay lit the longest.

I am always interested to hear about people’s impressions; these are factors that simply cannot be tested for in a lab. Furthermore, after a week of making lanterns available to community members, there is often a greater trust of the product itself, having seen it in action, and noticing that there was no need to purchase batteries or kerosene for lighting that week.

Technical Trainings and Project Design:

As is often the case, those vendors who displayed lanterns, are interested in selling them, and we like to prepare them the best that we can to answer many of the same questions that we are often asked. As such, a forum is chosen, and anyone who would like to attend is invited to take part in a solar technical training course. We cover the basics of how the solar panel works, the best ways to charge the lanterns, the different functions of the lanterns that the community would like to see made available and troubleshooting techniques.
At the end of the training seminars, we like to give the vendors the opportunity to discuss how they envision the lantern program progressing. We try to cover what types of support they will need to sell lanterns and what the most feasible way is for them to restock their lantern supplies. We attempt to incorporate all of the feedback into the overall program in order not to deviate from systems that are already in place and to utilize the experiences and input of those whom I always refer to as “the experts”.
The only question left after the training is “when are the lanterns arriving?”

The answer to which I will cover in the next post on working with distributors and manufactures.

Overview of MVP Lantern Program

The basic approach for introducing solar charged, LED based lanterns to the Millennium Villages is based on a private sector led effort to create and strengthen local institutions. This also means MVP employs a full-cost (no-subsidy) method that adds marginal costs at each segment of the supply chain so that the final cost represents the true cost of the lanterns. The approach includes MVP business development support for supporting a national supply chain with key interventions to build capacity of the vendors at the community level and strengthen various aspects of the chain. The core premise of this program is an enterprise-driven approach that spurs entrepreneurship as well as aids in job creation at the local level. The primary source of entrepreneur stimulus and job creation will be through the local vendors. Lantern sales become an indirect form of job creation through the local administrative unit and the vendor program.

The ultimate goal of the MVP lantern program is to spur the creation of a self-sustaining commercial supply chain through a phased approach where initial technical support and oversight would be replaced by strong commercial supply chain that delivers energy services across Sub-Saharan Africa. For long-term sustainability, village businesses should have a stake in the continuation of the program, with the wholesaler and retailers making a profit from each sale.

Key Lessons Learned from Lantern Program Implementation in the Millennium Development Village Clusters

Importance of “Project Launch”. Early in MVP cookstove project rollout MVP discovered the importance of having a person dedicated to introducing the lantern programs in the villages. At the onset, launching the MVP lantern program is time-consuming, and developing a supply chain, costing strategy and local distribution strategy requires regular communication with national and international stakeholders. Due to the demanding workloads of other MVP staff members, it is difficult for them to invest the necessary amount of time. A lantern program specialist dedicated to tailored program development and project launch should help mobilize the community behind a new product and develop a site-specific supply model to make the program sustainable. After this initial model-development and launch the program requires only minimal oversight, and can be done by site teams.

Reliable supply chains are crucial. The lantern program can only begin if ordered lanterns arrive in the sites and will only continue if lanterns can be sourced reliably. MVP sites learned this lesson the hard way when one lantern order, the brand highly preferred by villagers in all field testing, arrived on site months after the program launch. The lag between introducing the product to the village and having the product available to sell was detrimental to the program’s momentum and lanterns sales. Having a reliable commercial supply chain that can deliver lanterns quickly and inexpensively to remote sites in rural Africa is crucial for the success of any lantern program.

Find a sub-distributor of lantern products. Many lantern companies partner with national or regional sub-distributors to sell their products locally in many African countries. Identifying a lantern sub-distributor in the region before project launch is vital for the development of a strong supply chain and facilitating a rapid transition to a community-led project. Because these distributors import lanterns in large quantities using sea freight, they are often able to get them for much less than it would cost a small project to air-ship lanterns. Additionally, many of these sub-distributors are relatively new, and eager to establish new regional partnerships.

Create an accurate pricing model. In order to create a sustainable business model, the lanterns must be sold at full market cost without subsidy. This includes the price of purchase from the wholesaler or the sub-distributer, all taxes (if applicable), all transportation and warehousing costs and a vendor markup. Failing to include any of these costs will result in a cost model when lanterns are priced artificially low, and a need to increase the price of the lanterns. MVP experience shows a strong resistance of village cooperatives to sell lanterns at prices higher than those quoted in the original project launch.

Strengthen community business skills through support and training. While some of the selected lantern vendors may be shop owners, others may be ambulant vendors. In both cases it proves prudent to provide training in lantern use and function as well as basic accounting and record keeping skills. In the MVP project, it is important to know who purchased the lanterns in order to be able to later go back and survey these clients. These were skills that had to be taught.

Provide simple technical training. MVP has found that at the onset of the lantern programs the majority of vendors are not familiar with solar technologies or the styles of batteries found in the lanterns. It has proved important to train both vendors and, if possible, community members, to charge their lanterns adequately and not to overuse them. Simple mistakes, such as not fully charging a battery, or allowing it to go into deep discharge, can quickly damage the batteries and decrease the life of the lantern.

Choose reliable vendors. In a program where vendors are loaned lanterns as working capital, there is always a risk of non-repayment by the vendors. This can be partially avoided by measures such as having community members and family members vouch for, or essentially “guarantee” the vendor, or by asking vendors to put a down-payment on the lanterns, to be returned upon repayment of the initial capital. In MVP experience, choosing reliable vendors and having a strong incentives system in place to ensure repayment can lower the instances of non-repayment of the project’s capital investment.

Provide continuing technical assistance. Although the lantern launch lasts only a month, technical assistance must be continued through the first several cycles of selling, ordering and purchasing. In MVP experience, burgeoning cooperatives often do not have the capacity or motivation to place orders at the beginning without site team support. After these first few cycles of ordering and selling the lanterns, the site teams assume that a strong enough connection will be established between the sub-distributor and the local cooperatives and vendors that limited support will be required from the project in the future.

Create in-country partnerships. New emerging technologies and the popularity of new, young solar companies, such as D-light Design, have contributed to a boom in the number of solar-focused organizations operating in Africa. Creating relationships with other in-country organizations organized around similar objectives can serve both for knowledge sharing and, in some cases, actually allow for bulk transport of products, thus lowering shipping prices.

Effects of market spoilage. Poor quality local lanterns can have an effect on the initial popularity of even high-quality lanterns. It is important to recognize if any of these biases are present in the sites before launching the program – efforts can be made accordingly in marketing and promotion to distinguish the new lanterns from poor quality lanterns. It is also important to ensure that the lanterns arriving are in good working order, otherwise risking market spoilage for the introduced lanterns.

Importance of a warranty for faulty lanterns. Occasionally lanterns arrive in sites with faulty batteries. It is important that vendors can return these lanterns to an in-country sub-distributor under a pre-specified warranty. This gives cooperatives confidence that the lanterns they receive will be functional and it ensures there is an accountable party in the event lantern malfunction.

Importance of framing the project. During each project launch it has been important for MVP to emphasize the program as a business, and the community’s participation as the opportunity for people to either expand existing businesses or start new ones. This project framing helps the community understand that the lanterns are not give-aways and that the lanterns are opportunities for small businesses, shifting ownership of the project to the cooperative and vendors.

Seasons matter. Feedback from site teams and preliminary sales records indicate that sales change with the harvest season, depending on the amount of cash available in the villages. The time of year will differ by country, site and crops grown. When planning a project launch, it is important to examine the time of year when people in the village will have available income and use this as a proxy for demand.

The Millennium Village Project has initiated programs to disseminate efficient household energy products and services to the rural  Sub-Saharan African communities. A highlight of these programs have been their focus on building entrepreneurial capacity at the village level to ensure long term sustainability of the program.

This document is an executive summary of two such case flagship projects: Uganda and Malawi.

Read Post: Energy Entrepreneurship – Case Studies

Continued from Part 1 and Part 2.

In this final part of the three part series. We discuss the potential for scale up for the solar lantern programs – from small rural entrepreneurship to international supply chains.

Read Post: Household Lighting – Part 3

Continued from Part 1.

In this Part 2 of the three part series, we discuss the dissemination of efficient energy products by creation of grassroots businesses in Sub-Saharan Africa and how they can self-sustain themselves.

Read Post: Household Lighting – Part 2

Continue to Part 3.

In this three part series, we discuss our experience with introducing Solar Lanterns in Sub-Saharan Africa through the Millennium Villages Project. Part 1 describes the initial steps in creating a demand for the lanterns through community level interaction.

Read post:  Household Lighting – Part 1

Continue to Part 2 and Part 3 of the series.

The portable PowerPack has multiple potential uses but was primarily designed to address the lighting needs of rural populations in developing countries where nearly two billion people worldwide currently lack access to electric lighting.

For example, only 2% of rural western Kenya has access to grid electrification, and 97% of homes use kerosene wick lamps and kerosene lanterns for lighting. Kerosene wick lamps have a very low initial purchase cost, generally less than $0.25, but provide very little light. They produce between 10-20 lumens (or 0.5 lux at 2m) — little more than a standard wax candle. And despite costs as high as $20-25 per year for kerosene to fuel the wick lamp for 3 to 4 hours per day, the light is substandard, grossly inadequate for reading and produces a sooty flame.

The PowerPack offers substantially better light than kerosene lamps as well as the flexibility to power other appliances. It provides nearly 2.5 Ampere-hours of usable electricity at 12V and can power either a 5W compact fluorescent (200 lumens) or a one watt LED bulb (35 lumens). Both the CFL and LED lights can provide 20 to 40 times the lux levels of a kerosene wick lamp. The LED achieves these high lux levels by directing its lower lumen output to a smaller spot size ideal for task lighting. The Power Pack can also provide power to charge a cell phone or run a 12V radio.

The PowerPack consists of a charge and discharge control circuit and a sealed lead acid battery. It has one input jack, to connect to a DC charging source, and two outlets so it can be used for lighting as well as playing a 12V radio at the same time. It can also be used to recharge a cell phone with an appropriate adapter. The PowerPack can be recharged using a solar panel. Alternatively, when discharged, the portable PowerPack can be carried to a charging location, such as a school, community center, or battery charging business. Where AC power is available, the PowerPack can be charged by an AC/DC converter that provides DC input.

The electronic features of the PowerPack also offer advantages. The PowerPack includes a charge and discharge control circuit that ensures efficient and safe charging. The circuitry protects the battery from the damage caused by deep discharge, excessively rapid charging, or charging beyond the battery’s upper limit. This protection is designed to prolong the lifespan of the PowerPack’s battery.

ABSTRACT

Download Article

• Off-grid energy services for the poor: Introducing LED lighting in the Millennium Villages Project in Malawi