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La boulangerie solaire Solar Fire Bakery au Kenya s’est vue attribuer le deuxième Prix Afrique Excellence.

Joan Ogwang Arwa et son équipe sont primés ainsi que nous à Lytefire qui l’avons beaucoup soutenue depuis la création il y a 5 ans (déjà !), notamment Eva Wissenz, Urs Riggenbach et Muriel Fuhrer.

Le but de ce prix porté par une association créée en France par Mr Christian Teyssonnière de Gramont, est de mettre en avant des talents et des solutions réellement adaptés au contexte des pays d’Afrique. Il s’agit d’identifier des innovations, des pratiques et des modèles pouvant être mis à l’échelle et qui renforcent l’économie locale de manière soutenable pour les gens et leur environnement. Chacun des trois gagnants reçoit une dotation.

Avec Joan comme boulangère en chef, Cheryl et son équipe d’assistants boulangers et de vendeurs, Joan a récemment obtenu la certification KEBS du Bureau Kenyan de régulation, qui lui donne accès à davantage de marchés, comme les écoles, les hôpitaux, etc.

Joan a récemment ouvert une boutique et l’a repeinte à neuf il y a peu. Grâce au soutien financier du Prix Afrique Excellence, elle pourra investir dans une meilleure solution de transport.

Nous espérons voir de plus en plus de femmes africaines comme Joan gagner leur autonomie avec des projets d’artisanat solaire nourricier.

68 superbes projets ont été proposés cette année et on espère qu’il y en aura encore beaucoup l’année prochaine.

Nous sommes vraiment très heureux de cette reconnaissance.

Le site du Prix Afrique Excellence.

We are happy and honored to start a new project in East Africa with the trust and support of Jansen PrimeSteps Foundation. The foundation is focused on poverty alleviation through entrepreneurship, and with this new project PrimeSteps is going to help us elevate our work and increase our impact in Kenya, and if possible in Uganda as well.

A few years ago, the Foundation already supported the empowerment of women’s groups in Burkina Faso. In this beautiful but vulnerable country, women and youth, in particular, lack livelihood opportunities and access to energy. The project provided several Lytefire solar ovens, and the users received appropriate training. With this new cooperation, the goal is to go further and incubate six small-scale solar businesses in Kenya to be profitable job creators and suppliers of affordable baked goods in their communities.

We will provide our usual training that covers the technical aspects of the technology (use, maintenance, safety) and the basis of entrepreneurship training will cover stock management, accounting, customer acquisition, among the many other topics, to enable each group to succeed as independent entrepreneurs. For the best success of the entrepreneurs, the project will also provide incubation support beyond the initial training, to troubleshoot any entrepreneurial challenges during the startup phase. We believe this incubator approach is more and more the way Lytefire will structure our impact-oriented work.

As an impact company, at Lytefire we are focused on delivering sustainable equipment to create new income opportunities and empower populations in vulnerable countries. Our team offers innovative training programs that help start local businesses or promote the transfer of technological know-how to vocational schools. Every Lytefire installed can protect 651 m² of forest each year from being cut down for fuel. Learn more about our impact here and about our educational work here.

The UNDP (or United Nations Development Program) is one of the major stakeholders when it comes to implementing the energy transition and livelihoods improvement for vulnerable populations.

“UNDP works in about 170 countries and territories, helping to eradicate poverty, reduce inequalities and exclusion, and build resilience so countries can sustain progress. As the UN’s development agency, UNDP plays a critical role in helping countries achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.”

This year, we won a bid and we can finally start to work with his important agency. The beneficiaries of the projects in Angola are all women, and two of three project managers are women.

In Lunda-Norte, it is refugee settlement under UNHCR’s supervision. There is a big facility that is both used by refugees and also host community from that region. Trainings are provided there with sewing machines, computer room, kitchens, and so the idea is that the users can cook and bake with the solar energy so they have less need for electricity. The main user is a group of 60 women that will work in the kitchen, majority of which are refugees from different places. Almost 400 farmers are also involved on the project. People growing the food, experimenting with different crops, experimenting with food sovereignty, and creating income generation with the productive use of clean energy. Altogether, they are creating strategies to enhance local production and reinforce food security by incorporating maize and cassava flour to the recipes.

In Benguela, UNDP works with a local NGO, supporting with fisheries, use of less seeds, supporting small scale and more collective farmers as well in their production. This program is meant to support the switch from own sufficiency to being able to sell and make income. There is also a school there with almost 2000 children who are going to discover the solar efficiency with Lytefire! In the school UNDP is installing a small prefabricated building, which will be a library, a playroom and computer room with solar panels. This school used to have a bakery but the ovens broke down, then they used generators, and then the bakery stopped. So, the idea here is to restart the production with their Lytefire solar oven.

In Uige, UNDP works with World Vision. The location is very remote, people are very poor, everything is missing, including clean water and this where Lytefire is needed most.

As usual, we will share about the achievements in challenges in future posts as we receive them.

Our cooperation with World Vision has been very important to us because it is while working with them that our model could be refined towards African entrepreneurs in 2016 (here) and in 2017 (here).

We met Mrs Joan Arwa back then and she has always been a fantastic colleague. Since 3 years now she is successfully running her solar bakery in Kisumu, Kenya (here). Not far from there, in Sego, she recently trained a great group supported by World Vision for the Noswet program.

The group members have known each other for years and are very appreciated in the community. As per their report: “The group has over 30 members and they chose 5 to be working in the bakery at all times. They open early morning and close late evening for 6 days of the week, each day they bake 25kgs of bread, scones and cakes."

“This community based group serves various clients ranging from bakery walk-in customers, to nearby retail shops, and schools who give orders in bulk.

“Being a long rainy season they have currently been substituting sunlight energy with charcoal backup as they continue serving clients. When there is sun, of course they make solar baking. They say they use both sources of energy to power the bakery. The group has been working on buying more baking tins to produce more.”

World Vision’s local staff highlights that the group makes profit everyday with the solar barking activity and invests in their development. The data collection will allow to quantify everything much better.

A nice inauguration day has been organized to support the new Sego solar bakery!

See also our newsletter presenting the project (here).

The best reward for a company is a happy customer!

Joan Ogwang is not one of them.

She’s a woman entrepreneur from Kenya. In Kisumu, she created the "Solar Fire Bakery" in 2022. She trained herself and started with a first Lytefire oven. At that time, she was part of our team of trainers and also working for another company.

Between 2023 and 2024, her business growth has been +180%. In June 2024, she broke even and made her first profit. Now she is opening a second shop and she continues to organize great training around solar bakery.

Last week, during a meeting with World Vision Kenya and Suomen World Vision, one of the directors shared about her visit to Joan’s solar bakery a few weeks ago.

And she mentioned with such a big smile: "Joan’s bread is better than any other. So yummy! Her solar bakery is the best bakery in town." Sylvia Atayi, Elgeyo Marakwet Cluster Manager, WV Kenya

That’s the best reward. For Joan and her team, and also for us.

With her 2 Lytefire solar ovens, Joan bakes: Brown bread - White bread - Block cakes - Queen cakes - Puffy pastry pies (but still facing a challenge on positioning 😃) - Cookies - Roasted Peanuts - Scones - Buns

Joan’s courage is a day to day inspiration. We hope to cooperate with her even more.

We are aware of the cost of any big solar oven to power a business. That is why our efforts as social entrepreneurs combined with international NGO’s efforts is making a real difference to support the productive use of clean energy everywhere our innovative model is needed.

We are very excited to share soon with you about an upcoming project with Joan.

Don’t hesitate to ask for our case studies in Kenya and Uganda.