Solar Power Storage & Hybrid

Advens Geocoton and Bboxx join hands to provide electricity to 2m Burkinabé

The Sahel is one of the regions in the world with one of the lowest energy access rates at 26% (World Bank).

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While Africa constitutes 17% of the world’s population, it only accounts for 6% of global primary energy consumption, according to 2018 data from the International Energy Agency (IEA). However, the continent is recording an ever-greater demand for energy, to support continued growth for more than two decades, interrupted only by the Covid-19 pandemic.

To date, nearly 600 million Africans do not have access to electricity and one billion of them have no other alternative than traditional fuels such as wood and charcoal for cooking. In the G5 Sahel countries (Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad and Mauritania), of the 80 million inhabitants, 60 million live without electricity and are lit with kerosene or dry batteries.

The Sahel is one of the regions in the world with one of the lowest energy access rates at 26%, compared to 47% in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the World Bank. Energy inequalities can be measured at the global, regional and local levels. In fact, African rural areas remains plunged into darkness. In the “land of upright men”, only 5% of the rural population have access to electricity (compared to 18% nationally).

The Sahel Alliance, which was created in 2017,to support regional development and stability through several projects (particularly energy), aims to double the rate of access to energy between 2017 and 2022. To support this objective, Burkina Faso can rely on its institutional partners. The country also uses public-private partnerships (PPP), investors and manufacturers, as is now the case with the long-standing agro-industrial partner Advens Géocoton, which has been present in Burkina Faso for seven decades …

A French-British Deal

“We are already supporting 65,000 farms which support nearly 650,000 Burkinabes”, explains Karim Ait Talb, Deputy CEO of Advens Géocoton. The country has become the strategic center of the group’s activities in the sub-region. It will also open a new cotton ginning plant, for an amount of 15 million euros by the end of the year, in Ouargaye in the province of Koulpélogo.

To go further, the joint venture announced at the end of July by Bboxx and Advens Geocoton (at 50% each) has set itself the objective of providing clean energy to 2 million Burkinabes, at competitive prices. This project will create 500 local jobs. “These will not be precarious contracts. These will be contracts for salespeople, technicians, marketing specialists, call-center agents and logisticians,” explains Karim Ait Talb.

The partnership between Advens and Bboxx is based on a French joint venture (JV) which will own a Burkinabè company. The JV will offer 3 kit formulas including a solar panel, a battery, a management device connected to the cellular network, light bulbs, a telephone charger, a radio (or even a television and a fan, in addition). Eventually, additional services such as liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) cooking equipment or solar-powered water pumps will be available.

“We offer ‘pay as you go’ formulas in urban and peri-urban areas, and monthly flat rates of around $5 per user in rural areas,” explains Karim Ait Talb. The solution is not revolutionary, but it is the after-sales service offered by Bboxx that makes all the difference in the eyes of Advens Geocoton. “We supervise a fragile population of agricultural producers and we have been looking for a solution for a while to improve their access to energy. However, it is not enough to install kits, it is still necessary to ensure their maintenance. This is precisely what Bboxx offers us through its Pulse platform, which offers real customer support,” he explains.

Bboxx, the supplier of solar kits already operating in Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Kenya, but also in Togo (through a partnership with EDF), will benefit from the establishment of the French agro-industrial operator in the sub-region, to develop its activities there.

“This market entry is the first in a series, and we have before us a pipeline of exciting activities as part of our mission to transform lives through access to energy,” said Mansoor Hamayun, CEO and co-founder of Bboxx.

Finally, solutions supported by the joint venture should be deployed in rural areas of other countries in West and Central Africa.

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This Nigerian state gets serious about boosting private sector growth

Located just southeast of Nigeria’s capital Abuja, the State of Nasarawa is often overlooked to the benefits of the Federal Capital Territory or bigger industrial states like Kaduna to the north and Kogi to the south. But its government is actively trying to change that and developing new private sector cooperation to boost public infrastructure. In August, its state executive council approved the set-up of five new public-private partnerships (PPPs) to boost development across the state and revitalize its economy. They notably follow the adoption of a new law setting up the Nasarawa Investment & Development Agecy (NASIDA) and concerted efforts to support private sector growth. Chief amongst those projects is the Nasarawa Technology Village in partnership with ABS Blueprint and Modern Shelter. The PPP project integrates housing, technology centers and commercial facilities and echoes a similar venture developed in Abuja, the Abuja Technology Village Science and Technology Park (STP) and Special Economic Zone (SEZ). In transport, the state is pushing ahead with the establishment of the Nasarawa Transport Company to support trade and investment. The initial steps notably rely on the construction of modern bus terminals in various stage of development across the state. Healthcare is another priority with the concession of services offered within the Dalhatu Araf Specialist Hospital in the state capital, Lafia. The operations and maintenance and three key departments within the facility are being given to the private sector, including radiology, laboratory, and mortuary. The Concession Agreement for the Concession of Radiology and Lab Services was signed on September 6th this year with DNA Labs Limited. If successful, this innovative concession model would boost private sector investment in the state’s healthcare system while improving service delivery. Because of their continued fiscal deficits and unstable macroeconomic outlook, most Nigerian states do not qualify to issue sub-national bonds that could support their infrastructure development. As a result, several state governments have been reviewing their legislation to become more competitive and attract private sector investment. The move is seen as encouraging to diversify economic activity beyond Lagos and creating a healthy competition between states.

Exploration activity is heating up in the Orange Basin offshore South Africa

South Africa has been home to some of the world’s largest discoveries in recent years, with TotalEnergies opening up a new hydrocarbon’s province in the Outeniqua Basin via its Brulpadda (2019) and Luiperd (2020) discoveries. But as TotalEnergies and its partner work towards the set-up of an early production system on these discoveries, attention has turned further west to the Orange Basin. The Orange Basin covers most offshore areas from Cape Town up to the Namibian border. It notably contains the TotalEnergies-operated Block 2913b in Namibia and the Azinam-operated Block 2B in South Africa where the Venus-1 and Gazania-1 exploratory wells are expected to be spudded this year. In anticipation of increased drilling activity and potential world-class discoveries, seismic data providers Searcher and Spectrum (acquired by TGS in 2019) have been planning large seismic data acquisitions over the basin. Both companies are well-established players in the region. In November 2020, Searcher had already announced a new multi-client 2D and 3D seismic rectification project offshore South Africa, in collaboration with the Petroleum Agency of South Africa (PetroSA). Its seismic data currently stands at about 110,000 km of 2D and 15,000 km2 of 3D and covers the Outeniqua Basin and its sub-Basins: the Bredasdorp, Infanta, Pletmos, Gamtoos, Algoa and Southern Outeniqua Basins. Meanwhile, and following extensive long-offset acquisition and reprocessing programs between 2012 and 2019, Spectrum (now TGS) offers over 69,000 km of high-quality, modern 2D multi-client seismic from the Orange to the Namibe Basins. It also completed an additional 2D survey comprising approximately 3,900 km of the outboard Orange Basin in April 2019. But they have not stopped there and are about to step up their seismic data acquisition efforts significantly. They have both applied to PetroSA for Reconnaissance Permits enabling them to carry out new multi-client surveys over the Orange Basin: PetroSA acknowledged Spectrum’s application in July 2020, and Searcher’s in May 2021. Searcher’s ambition is to undertake either a 2D or a 3D seismic survey (or a combination of both) acquired back-to-back over the 2021 / 2022 Austral Summer. Its proposed 2D survey would have a total cumulative length of up to approximately 22,014 km while its proposed 3D seismic survey would cover an area of up to approximately 10,000 km2. Meanwhile, Spectrum’s application covers the undertaking of a multi-client speculative 2D seismic survey in a number of petroleum license blocks, covering an area in the order of 180,000 km2. These upcoming surveys, coupled with exploratory drilling by TotalEnergies and Azinam, are expected to confirm Southwestern Africa as one of the world’s hottest exploration frontier this decade. They would also have tremendous implications for two countries that have remained excluded from the league of global oil & gas producers and continue to rely on expensive imports to meet their energy needs.