How Solar can Improve Energy Access, Sustainable Development in Nigeria, Africa – Ibrahim Abba Gana

Can you give us a brief background of your working career?

I started my career at Master Foods USA, which is M&M (Mars), the company that produces Bounty snickers, and other nice chocolates. I had a great experience there after my MBA at Northeastern University in Boston. These experiences gave me a very deep academic knowledge of the business environment. It also prepared me for my passion – running a business.

I joined MTN in 2003 and spent 18 years working at MTN Nigeria. I also spent some time at the group operations office in Accra with the VP for operations. I was the Chief Marketing Officer for MTN in Cameroon. In 2015, I moved to the group (MTN) in South Africa, where I was a group general manager for global propositions and pricing. I also spent time at the group looking at mobile financial services in digital. Overall, I learnt a lot from my experiences across Africa – Cameroon, Ghana, South Africa, and also travels across many African markets where MTN operates. I also met diverse people. I think in life, the more you travel and meet with people, coupled with the different challenges that you confront, you tend to learn a lot.

In 2020, towards the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, I think a lot of people my age during the pandemic had time to reflect. I had time to reflect, definitely. I’d always wanted to start a company and run it. My father wanted that. He argued that if you don’t work for somebody else, you won’t be able to really work well for yourself. That led me into this and I thank him very much for that, I also thank God for his guidance.

What’s the inspiration behind starting your own company?

I started Sandstream because of a single vision; I believe that energy is critical to the development of every society. I believe that renewable energy, particularly the use of solar, wind, and in the future, biomass – in great number, will bring a certain abundance in the world. That abundance is going to make things cheaper. With abundant, cheap energy, producing food will be easier, irrigation of farms and downstream, primary processing cheaper too.

Also, we are challenged with global warming. I studied chemistry at the University of Greenwich, London. Back then, the main topics in class were global warming, degradation of the ozone layer, and so on. This was 1996. Today, it’s not a major discussion in the classroom. We see fires and flooding happening in places in Nigeria, Africa and around the world. So, we owe it to the environment to be able to meet the net zero targets, where we can live in a more balanced world. All this sort of inspired me to select the renewable energy industry.

Our products are designed for the African consumer, particularly Nigeria being the largest on the continent. We have mini grids, and we build them in communities and distribute energy for homes. We also distribute such energy for productive use. We try as much as possible to focus on markets where there’s trade. Overall, in Sandstream, the next point is solar home systems, where we aim to supplement in our homes solar for using diesel generators. That’s a big opportunity because all of us need to contribute towards reducing greenhouse effect. I recommend that more awareness is brought to the fact that switching to renewable energy not only saves you cost, but you also help preserve the environment for future generations.

How do you intend to achieve your business goals focusing mainly on rural communities, with low purchasing power?

I think most businesses ask this question. Yes, they may not have high purchasing power. If you go in and invest, for instance, in a mini-green of $200,000, you’re not going to be able to return your investment. So, one way is the de-risking. Sandstream is part of the World Bank National Electrification Programme (NEP) in partnership with the Rural Electrification Agency. That allows us to access grants to de-risk the development of mini-grids in rural communities. Although, having done that, it still doesn’t make it profitable. But here, where we offer internal connectivity services, we offer productive use equipment in terms of cold rooms, in terms of irrigation, and we help those communities go to market.

For example, with tomatoes, we can help farmers in learning how to pick them better, in learning how to preserve them better before it goes to market. And we can also help them in transporting all that to market and selling via our website, shopsandstream.com. so, we help digitize an entire ecosystem. For instance, on our website, you go to a particular mini-grid, and what we’re doing is, that community cannot build or manage their own website, but they can sell their tomatoes and their granites on shopsandstream. And this follows the vision. And you can see that, not only do we become profitable, but we make food accessible to Nigerians at a cheaper rate.

How does your solar energy company deliver supplies from a chain of farmers across the country via digital technology?

There are companies who register farmers and they buy products. This is not our model. We focus on a community or town. For example, let’s take a mini-grid that we built in a local government in Northern Nigeria. In that community, 90% of the people are farmers. But we have to, through the programme, sell electricity to them. Now, a concern is, they will not be able to pay us back, because of their low purchasing power. But with our presence there, we try to make them richer. How do we do that? We help use the energy to allow them to do irrigation, which increases their yield. We put cold rooms for them. They pay for it, which helps them preserve their food longer. And if someone wants to buy tomatoes, we can help them advertise it.

In the long-term, we want to bring the payment aspect into it, So, a tomato farmer in Bichi local government (Kano State), can sell his tomatoes to some lady cooking in Lagos State via shopsandstream.com. That is what we want to do. What happens right now, is that half of that tomato gets spoiled, between Bichi local government and Mile 12 market in Lagos. We’ve already looked at this data, and about 50% gets wasted; and the prices increase three times fold in the rainy season. Now, imagine what we can do to prices with the right picking and preservation techniques. My company focuses on one community at a time, building minigrids. And we take all our services to them.

What are some of your company’s major achievements thus far?

I think we have made some impact in these areas. For instance, our first product was that we built the largest rooftop solar solution in the country at the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital. It was commissioned in 2021. We started by putting 500 kilowatts of system on a very critical hospital in a very critical region, serving a very critical need. We go for clients who really need renewable energy to save lives.

We’re also very proud of the over 60 homes that we have connected our solar home systems to. These are high-value customers who we’ve connected between three to 10 kilowatts systems all over the country. We learn a lot from our customers and get good feedback from them, which has helped us at Sandstream build an excellent audit fulfillment process today. So, if you go to our website, and order a solar system, we’ll connect you within five days. It’s a smooth process.

Also, we’ve built and completed one mini-grid in Bichi local government in Kano, which is about 400 homes and seven commercials. We’re connecting homes one at a time. Six months or a year from now, I can look back and be able to better explain the impact we’ve had. What we did there is a proof of concept. We wanted to build one, understand the levers of cost, and be profitable. Our selection process is unique, because we are going for rural areas that are supporting the country’s food system. They have purchasing power; they are the ones that farm for the nation. And we are building them. This is something that we’re also very proud of as a company that thinks in that direction. Presently, we have over 200 new sites for rollout over the next few years, in 2025 and 2026. We’re also proud of the people who work at Sandstream since it was established four years ago.

How can we harness renewable energy in Nigeria in a sustainable way to bridge the gap in the power sector?

We don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Look around the world, there’s no country that has been able to shift without subsidies. I believe that government has to have a deliberate programme to subsidise renewable energy costs, and particularly, subsidise citizens through rebates for switching to renewable energy for their home use. In the long run, it helps society. Many countries, like Germany, have been able to do that using used this method. They’ve sat down and thought about it. If there were other means to do it, they would have done it. It’s easier to copy what is working than to waste a lot of time reinventing the wheel.

Do you think Nigeria can achieve its target of net zero emission by 2060?

Yes, I think Nigeria can achieve its own quota by 2060. But it requires everybody contributing to that quota. It can’t be a government-only target. Government’s responsibility should be to create enough awareness to citizens on the negative effects of global warming and what we need to do as a country to mitigate it.

What’s your view about the use of gas as a transition fuel, especially in Nigeria, which has the largest gas reserves in Africa?

In my view, the use of gas is necessary in our transition. And we have gas investments already in place. But you can’t drive any form of meaningful industrialization with solar energy. But solar is going to help people shift to more affordable and sustainable way of life. I accept the argument that natural gas is a hydrocarbon, but it is cleaner, emits less carbon, and it is important transition fuel, particularly for Nigeria.

Let’s talk about your personal transition from telecoms to the renewable energy sector. How was this transition for you?

It wasn’t easy. Let me just put it this way. Just imagine working in a company and being used to a monthly salary. I was used to a cycle for almost 18 years. And now here I was, starting a company. I believed in what I was doing, but there was nothing concrete. At that time, about four years ago, the regulation was not even in place. The regulation just got in place that allows you to build mini grids. So, I was building a company in anticipation of a draft resolution or law that was in progress. That made me nervous. Also, I had to drop my earnings. So, I had to live within a new form of salary where my company had to pay me, which wasn’t more than 10% of my previous salary. Right now, I’m at a happy place and looking out into a future where all the things we talked about technically happens.

Having travelled across Africa, what areas do you think African leaders should explore to improve trade and development on the continent?

I’m a strong believer of Kwame Nkrumah’s vision of one Africa. I also strongly believe in madam (Dr) Nkosazana Zuma’s viewpoint – she promoted a very strong African unity when she was the chair of the African Union. When I travel to African countries, I ask myself a lot of questions. For instance, I’ve not had to process a UK visa. Every time I go in, I get a 10-year visa… But if I was going to South Africa right now, I have to go through a painful visa process. The economies of African countries will be much better if they were borderless; because whatever it is that we think is not in one African country is in the other African country, just in another form. There’s need for transformation in Africa and we should start from basic understanding of the fundamentals.