Blackout supplier plans to start selling solar-powered phone chargers

By MARK MUTAHI

After years of being unreliable and frustrating its customers with power outages, one of the local power distributors has decided to target a market segment that it considers lucrative — power outage victims.

 It has now emerged from reliable sources that the power utility company may be planning to venture into manufacturing solar-powered mobile phone chargers. This is in an attempt to make money from its customers at all times — both in the presence and absence of electricity.

The company is well known for supplying blackouts in Kenya. The question that is now being asked is why a company whose core business is power distribution would involve itself in such messy and low margin activity — manufacturing and selling solar-powered phone chargers.

Power cuts

“Who says their core business is distributing power?” posed one angry customer of the utility company. “To me, their core business is power cuts! Every now and then they take us back to the caveman era where animal fat and wood was used to light the dwellings. I am not surprised!” he said.

This seemed to echo what Clarkson Jaoko, a consumer watchdog employee, thinks: “They are saying look, when you are not using one of our products, turn the other cheek and use the alternative we are providing!

“It‘s like driving to a petrol station and finding no fuel, but the petrol station instead of directing you elsewhere, proceeds to offer to sell you walking shoes. And tell you get out of the car and walk to your destination instead…

“Or like a mobile network company that constantly suffers poor network coverage going into the business of manufacturing and selling drums and smoke-emitting devices, which were used in pre-colonial Africa to send messages…

“So that when there’s a network outage you can revert to those ancient methods to communicate! I could go on and on…”

Capitalise

For Jane Sumu, a financial analyst who specialises in utility stocks, the writing should be on the wall for other complimentary industries and sectors.

“What will stop the company from, say, going into selling charcoal iron boxes to capitalise on its shortcomings? This giant could be on it’s way to eating your lunch!” he says.

With speculation high about the power distributor’s intentions to go into manufacturing solar-powered phone chargers, wags on social media are having a field day trying to predict what the brand name for the new product might be. 

“What is the curse word that jumps out of your mouth the moment power goes off?” one wag posed.

“That’s it…one of the more common profanities would be a suitable name for the solar chargers!” he added.

Eclipses

The biggest question though is whether the solar-powered phone chargers will be a hit with the customers.

“I guess I would have to try them first,” offered one city resident.

“But I just hope they don’t transfer their reliability issues to the solar chargers. Who knows, their chargers might be shoddily done and the excuse they will give is increased incidences of eclipses when they don’t charge properly! Those solar chargers would have to be eclipse-proof for me to buy them!” the resident swore.

However, when contacted for comment, the spokesperson for the utility company would neither confirm nor deny the rumours. Perhaps in keeping with the company tradition of keeping citizens in the dark.