Sun shines on Egypt's solar startups

Sarah Mousa eyed the small boys, vigorously hacking at each other with sticks in the narrow backstreet of Cairo’s Al Darb Al Ahmar slum, and apologized for the delay as her two employees put together a display model of a portable rooftop solar water heater.

Mousa had tried leaving an exhibition model outside her rented Aga Khan Foundation workshop, to show local residents what her socially-minded startup Shamsina was building: cheap, functional solar water heaters designed for the very poor.

Unfortunately, the local kids – perhaps even the ones engaging in the mock sword fight in front of us – decided it would make a better target for a stone-throwing competition.

Mousa is one of a class of entrepreneurs targeting Egypt’s growing off-grid, under-electrified or environmentally conscious market for solar energy. The businesses range from Mousa’s social venture to a company named Sun City that wants to re-engineer buildings’ plumbing to better work with solar water heaters, to the granddaddy of Egyptian solar energy startups, five-year-old KarmSolar.

A government kick

Egypt’s solar sector, made up of organizations large and small, was kick-started last year when the government finally threw its support behind the concept of renewable energy.

And with President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi demanding 20 percent of the country’s energy to come from renewable by 2020 and government regulations flooding in after years of inactivity, the sector is picking up pace and young entrepreneurs are flocking.

Original article by Rachel Williamson

Continue reading at Wamda:

Sun shines on Egypt’s solar startups