Moving from Training Solar Entrepreneurs to Incubating Them

For more than a decade Lytefire has tackled the energy, climate and poverty crisis by spreading sustainable solar tech and training. We’ve been able to create jobs where resources are few, reduce emissions while growing the local economy, and for us this has also brought new hope that yes, people can be empowered, we can do things differently, we can make change possible. At the same time, as an impact company we are always critical and looking to improve - and this is why we are excited to shift from the training approach to the incubation approach. What’s our thinking behind that?

You get what you measure

“The project has trained 100 people in solar…” – It’s great when we read this, but what do we actually know about how many of the trainees actually make use of their training? For us at Lytefire it means asking ourselves how many solar entrepreneurs who trained in running their own sustainable bakery actually run one.

When looking deeper into this, it quickly becomes clear that the number of people trained is not a good indicator of the actual impact.

For us this means two things:

1. We shouldn’t design projects to train the maximum number of people, and
2. We should design projects to support people in their whole impact journey.

We have been running solar training activities with major NGOs, UN organizations and a myriad of locally rooted organizations across Africa and beyond. We know that the success of a solar bakery depends immensely on the local ingenuity and motivation of the entrepreneurs, and that when done right, Lytefire can yield carbon reductions, cost savings and a competitive advantage in the market place by reducing the price of bread or giving entrepreneurs a better margin.

But often the challenges are not related to the product and technology, but rather challenges in the day-to-day operation, the administration, with permits, the workforce, political instability, etc.

Let’s incubate

With the project we are able to launch several new solar bakeries, but we are also able to provide incubation support to already trained groups. In Kenya, we work with Joan Arwa, entrepreneur owner of the Solar Fire Bakery in Kisumu and trainer. She was recently awarded with the Africa Excellence Prize from France.

One such group is the Kormei Bakery in Sego, Kenya. The group was initially trained and equipped on behalf of World Vision. The training showed immediate uptake and the bakery has been running ever since at a high output. As a result, Sego has become a very interesting case study candidate for us. Through incubation we can follow their progress more hands-on, and also help the bakery not get bogged down with administrative, staff or other issues that may arise as the bakery grows and faces new challenges.

As we are in the implementation of this new incubator approach we cannot share yet about the successes and challenges of the entrepreneurs and our program yet – but we can be sure that being closer to our end users and having the resources to support them with incubation is a good thing!

We also welcome other organizations, as well as clients and financiers in the impact industry to shift their project implementation goals to build long-term projects that take responsibility to create impact over time. We also think that shifting from metrics like people trained to jobs created or income generated is an important perspective change.

So, we will soon share more about the outcome of this incubation approach.

Are you interested in solar incubation? Schedule a meeting with us.