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Hated boda bodas going electric, lighting the energy transition way
  • News
  • Category: Business, General Market News, Livelihood + Living, Technology + Products
  • We hate them and love them in equal measure. The two-wheel taxis that started with a few manual bicycles half a century ago at the Kenya-Uganda border and today employ a couple of million East African riders as motorised boda boda are as nasty as they are useful. Now, they are set to lead the region’s energy transition....
Start-up closures and scalebacks leave trail of job losses in Africa
  • News
  • Category: Business, Finance, General Market News
  • Across Africa, thousands of people are estimated to have lost their jobs in the wave of start-up closures and scale-backs last year, mostly in the top four start-up markets on the continent – Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt and South Africa. Last year, the amount of funding raised by start-ups on the continent declined by 31 percent to about $4.5 billion....
Kenya’s BURN secures $12 million to expand its clean cooking products across Africa
  • News
  • Category: Companies + Organisations
  • The company says the new investment will go towards the distribution of electric cookstoves in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia and biomass stoves in Nigeria, DRC, Tanzania, and Mozambique over the next two years. These products will avoid over 12 million tons of carbon emissions over the next 7 years. ...
Concessional financing to encourage small scale renewable power initiatives
  • News
  • Category: Finance
  • This article looks at the vital role of concessional financing in helping to achieve climate change objectives in emerging markets, through helping to make small scale power initiatives economically viable for developers and their financiers in traditionally high-risk investment markets. In this discussion of small scale renewable power initiatives...
The philanthropic disparities in clean energy funding
  • Article
  • Category: Finance, General Market News
  • Western philanthropies, including foundations, funds, and others, spend billions of dollars annually to help countries adapt to climate change by investing in clean energy. However, compared to the funds dedicated to projects in poor countries in the world, the disparities are so huge that one gets a sense of an apartheid-like culture....
Business Fossil fuel-focused Africa Energy Bank on track to start this year
  • News
  • Category: Finance, General Market News, Companies + Organisations
  • The bank, a partnership between Afreximbank and the African Petroleum Producers Organisation, is meant to help plug a funding gap in Africa amid pressure on major banks from environmental groups to shift investment dollars away from climate-warming oil and gas projects. The bank is set to start operations this year with an initial $5 billion....
BasiGo gets Sh395m to scale up electric buses output
  • News
  • Category: Companies + Organisations
  • BasiGo has received $3 million (Sh394.5 million) in equity funding from CFAO Group, a mobility industry player wholly owned by Japan-based Toyota Tsusho Corporation, to ramp up the assembly and delivery of electric buses in the local market and Rwanda. The capital injection is split between CFAO Kenya and Mobility54....
New solar-powered system converts saltwater into drinking water
  • News
  • Category: Technology + Products
  • The new system works by separating the salt using a set of specialised membranes which channel salt ions into a stream of brine, leaving the water fresh and drinkable. The researchers said that the process is over 20 per cent cheaper than traditional methods and could signal a step change in providing clean water in developing countries and beyond....

Sun-Connect News is a leading portal for decentralised energy supply in Sub-Saharan Africa. Since 2010, we have been providing up-to-date facts and the latest analyses for experts and practitioners.

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