Innovative African solutions to sustainable energy win Ashden Awards 2018

 
Sales Agent at Sun King store, selling Easy Buy  products
 

NAIROBI, KENYA: The annual Ashden Awards for 2018 have been announced with an outstanding roster of winners, including innovative initiatives in East Africa and Nigeria.  

Three of the ten 2018 winners are providing benefits to society in Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Nigeria. They range from architecture in Africa that delivers response to the social and environmental needs of local communities, to intelligent software that can be implemented into solar-powered products, enabling pay-as-you-go activation, making them available to customers on lower incomes.  

The winners will be presented with their awards at a prestigious ceremony at the Royal Geographical Society in London on Thursday 14th June. They join more than 200 enterprises that have won an Ashden Award since they were founded in 2001. Each winner will receive tailored support to help scale up their work and a prize of up to £20,000.

The Ashden Awards are renowned for identifying and championing initiatives that deliver sustainable energy in the UK and elsewhere around the world. 

Anga won the Financial and Business Model Innovation Award for its solutions that allow clean energy products, including solar lanterns, solar home systems and mobile phone charging points to be remotely controlled – including being switched on and off – so they can run on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Lumos Global provides households and businesses with an affordable way to pay for solar energy on a subscription basis through local mobile phone network stores. This provides an efficient, sustainable alternative to using generators during a power outage. Lumos has won the Energy Access Frontiers Award.

“The award winners never fail to amaze and inspire our panel of judges, and the 2018 line-up is certainly no exception. The solutions, ideas and innovations that our winners have developed are already making a crucial difference in terms of creating access to energy, lowering carbon emissions, developing clean, sustainable solutions for cities and providing vital health and economic benefits. It is absolutely necessary for us to work together to achieve the objectives of the Paris Agreement and the UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and every one of our 2018 winners is playing a key role in moving climate change action forward,” said Ashden’s Founder Director, Sarah Butler-Sloss.