Let’s face it: living in Nigeria is not always a walk in the park. Mainly because we continue to lack access to affordable and reliable modern electrification. One Bloomberg article said that Nigerians run on generators and 9 hours of grid power per day. The grid will eventually be able to provide large amounts of electricity to its citizenry, but it will take decades for this to be predictable and reliable. And so, we turn to millions of noisy, expensive petrol and diesel generators to fill the void. Why? Because it’s not easy to find, pay for, and get great customer experiences around cleaner, more affordable alternatives. By now, most of us know about solar, but in Nigeria, it’s still hard to figure out which solar capacity to use, what inverter is best, which type of battery to use, what happens when there’s an issue, how to pay for or finance a solution, who should install and service it, what optimal combination of assets to deploy, and so on…

Problem

In Nigeria alone, more than 16.7 million middle-income citizens are forced to use petrol or diesel generators to supplement weak, unreliable grids. Small Distributed Energy Providers & Solar Installers (DEPs) can end this challenge, but no ecosystems exist to accelerate their climate and energy access impact. The key challenges preventing Small Distributed Energy Providers from scaling clean energy access are (1) access to financing, (2) trained installer technicians, (3) durable clean energy technology, (4) excellent customer service, and (5) optimized power solutions.

That’s why we decided to start SunFi.co. SunFi, short for “Sun Finance”, is building Nigeria and Africa’s first Energy FinTech ecosystem, which is purpose-built to help Small Distributed Energy Providers scale clean energy solutions to serve millions of consumers. We do so by building digital workspaces that contain technology tools and financial services which energy providers can use to scale their businesses. We work with financial institutions and investors at scale to bring financing into SunFi workspaces by innovating tools that help financiers achieve their impact and financial return objectives safely. We also partner with the best Original Equipment Manufacturers to directly serve their customers or simplify the supply chain for Small Clean Energy Providers and their consumers.

At SunFi, we optimize the workflow of Distributed Energy Providers with purpose-built tools to make their jobs of optimizing, selling, installing, and managing solutions for their consumers easier. We develop these tools by leveraging our previous experience as a Distributed Energy Provider and by listening to other energy providers who leverage our ecosystem to scale their businesses. SunFi will become the one-stop shop for clean energy providers, financial partners, and equipment manufacturers looking to scale clean energy solutions to millions of consumers in Nigeria and beyond.

We have many exciting features and tools which we will release over the coming year and beyond. For now, if you’re interested in building or growing a small solar energy business, you’re an Original Equipment Manufacturer looking to expand your business, or a Supporter looking to help us execute our projects, please visit us at SunFi.co and sign up to see how you can get involved.

SunFi is going to become a global ecosystem that scales clean energy solutions to millions of people. We’re starting our global journey here, in Nigeria, and we hope you will join us for the ride. Let’s Scale and Simplify Clean Energy Solutions together!

Rotimi Thomas on behalf of

SunFi Team.