· Seeking an innovative and passionate individual who has a strong track record of delivering results
· Must have experience of leading multi-functional teams within a consumer sales environment across sales, distribution and supply chain functions
· You will ideally have worked in both the private and the public sector
· Must be passionate about community healthcare and the impact this can have
· Field based sales is a major focus for this organisation (min team size of 50 therefore required)
· Exceptional organisational skills with an art for developing systems to gather and analyse data from the field to help drive performance
· Lead by example to capability build within the team
· This role will be based in Kampala and will provide critical operational leadership to the organisation locally

This exciting role presents a clear opportunity for someone who takes pride in building a robust and sustainable business and is passionate about having the opportunity to make a key contribution to the success of this high impact social enterprise which is changing lives across Uganda.

If you are interested, please send your CV in word format to Sarah Fitzgerald, MD at Executives in Africa at: sf@executivesinafrica.com

Paul Musasizi, chief executive officer of Kiira Motors Corporation (KMC), the state-funded company behind the vehicle, says with the potential for solar power in Uganda, it only made sense that engineers started to leverage the energy source for cars.

“The bus is purely electric and our idea is to test the strength of solar energy in enabling people to move,” he told a local newspaper.

The company built the prototype with funds from the Ugandan government. But KMC is hoping to attract investors to the project to start producing the buses for the mass market by 2018 at a retail price of $58,000. Typically, 35-seater buses retail between $35,000 to $50,000.

“As we continue with developing concepts, we are also studying the market,” Doreen Orishaba, one of the engineers in the project, told Uganda’s Observer newspaper. “We want to see that we don’t make vehicles for stocking but for production on orders.”

This is not KMC’s first foray into energy efficient car-making. Last year, the company introduced the Kiira Smack, a petrol-electric hybrid that it said would come into the market by 2018 as well for a $20,000 price. But analysts were doubtful at the time of the project’s commercial viability. The price could prove prohibitive, they argued, in a market that sells an estimated 20,000 cars a year. Additionally, in a part of the world where electricity is not a widely available commodity, electric dependent cars could put undue pressure on national grids.

But by using solar as a power source for the Kayoola, KMC may have found a way to overcome that challenge in this instance.

“Uganda being one of the 13 countries positioned along the equator, gives us about eight hours of significant solar energy that can be harvested,” Musasizi says.

By Quartz Africa.

Kampala, Uganda – Wednesday 23 September 2015 marked the official launch of the GroFin Small and Growing Businesses (SGB) Fund in Africa that aims to catalyse sustainable job creation through supporting small and growing businesses in Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, Zambia, Kenya, South Africa, Rwanda, Tanzania and Egypt. The GroFin SGB Fund seeks to provide an integrated solution of patient risk capital and end-to-end business support for SGBs. Each year the Fund aims to support up to 100 entrepreneurs, with an estimated average loan size of US$ 350,000. Over the next 10 years the Fund will target the creation of 47,000 sustainable jobs. The Fund’s tiered capital structure is a distinguishing feature that enables a range of social and commercial investors to join the Fund post its launch. The fund is an uncapped and unlimited-life fund, and GroFin aims to initially grow the dedicated SGB Fund to US$150 million.

Typically, SGBs and entrepreneurs in Africa lack the vital resources they need to succeed: access to flexible patient capital; access to business skills and training; and linkages to the supply chains of larger organisations.

The Fund was co-created by GroFin, a pioneering SME development finance organisation and: * Shell Foundation, an independent charity, with an 11 year track record of providing vital support to under-served SGBs in Africa and the Middle East * the German development bank KfW, a seasoned founder of structured funds * the Norwegian Investment Fund for Developing Countries, Norfund, and * the Dutch government through the Dutch Good Growth Fund (DGGF) Over the next two years, with grant funding from the German government through KfW, GroFin plans to expand the Fund’s support to SGBs to three more African countries.

Since 2004 GroFin has helped to sustain more than 18,000 jobs, provided business support to more than 8,000 SGBs, and invested in 600 business owners’ dreams. Having generated US$2.4 billion in economic impact, GroFin, Shell Foundation, KfW, DGGF and Norfund are now bringing this proven, integrated solution to more SGBs in Africa.

In most OECD countries the SGB sector is a major contributor to inclusive economic growth and job creation. However, entrepreneurs in Africa are grossly under-served, with 50-90% of SGBs failing within the first five years. As a result, many African countries are missing out on a major engine for sustainable job creation that can help tackle poverty and improve livelihoods. Start-ups and small businesses often struggle to access the capital they need to expand. Their limited track record, fluctuating cash flows, low levels of collateral and capacity limitations makes it difficult to meet the lending criteria of most banks.

The GroFin SGB Fund seeks to address these market barriers by providing African entrepreneurs with an integrated solution of patient growth finance, tailored business support, and access to markets. Based on the viability of an entrepreneur’s business and growth plans, and not the availability of collateral, entrepreneurs will be able to access loans ranging from US$100,000 to US$1.5 million for a period between two and six years.

A unique feature of the Fund is the Business Support Facilities where business owners can obtain advice from GroFin’s local and international SGB experts. Through pre-investment business support, GroFin’s team of locally-based investment managers will help entrepreneurs develop viable business plans, identify and mitigate potential risk and execute effective growth strategies. For those who qualify for investment, the business support services continue for the entire duration of the investment.

The launch, held at the Kampala Serena Hotel, hosted international representatives of the public, private and non-governmental sectors interested in learning how efforts such as the GroFin SGB Fund can spur inclusive economic growth through supporting Africa’s SME sector. Attendees included:

* The Honourable Shem Bageine, Uganda’s Minister of State for East African Affairs * Mr. Günter Nooke, the German Chancellor’s Personal Representative for Africa and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) Commissioner for Africa * Dr. Peter Blomeyer, German Ambassador to the Republic of Uganda * Dr. Klaus Müller, Director of KfW Development Bank * Mr. Hans Peter van der Woude, Head of Development Cooperation and Economic Affairs of the Netherlands Embassy in Uganda * Mr. Kjartan Stigen, Norfund’s regional director for East Africa * Dr. Margaret Blick Kigozi, Shell Foundation Trustee and President of the International Federation of Business and Professional Women in Uganda The keynote address by Mr. Günter Nooke reinforced the importance of investing in emerging markets. Other notable speakers included Shell Foundation’s Mr. William Kalema, Norfund’s East Africa Regional Director Mr. Kjartan Stigen, Mr. Anton Koonstra on behalf of the Manager of DGGF, GroFin Group CEO Jurie Willemse and two existing GroFin clients, Mr. Caleb Muhairwe of Kiruhura Dairy Development Co. Ltd and Mrs. Beatrice Mawano of SAS Dental Clinic.

GroFin operates fully staffed offices in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, Zambia, South Africa, Ghana, Egypt, and Nigeria. While each country has specific development goals, the GroFin SGB Fund’s key focus is investing in high-impact sectors such as healthcare, education, agro-processing and energy in addition to other sectors that support inclusive growth.

By Grofin

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Quotable

“This is a clear demonstration of the high levels of interest that investors have for smaller investments in Africa that deliver both quantifiable investment and development returns. The confidence shown in the GroFin team and our unique business model that integrates risk finance with business development assistance to develop entrepreneurs, local business and employment at scale is heartening.” Jurie Willemse Chief Executive Officer GroFin

“In many parts of Africa, SMEs account for over two thirds of GDP and are therefore critical to economic growth and poverty reduction. However many entrepreneurs struggle to access the finance and skills they need to grow their businesses successfully. With the launch of the GroFin SGB Fund, entrepreneurs across nine countries will be able to access critical ingredients for growth that will also create jobs and support inclusive economic development. Having co-developed the model with GroFin and built a 10 year track record, we are pleased to see the model being adapted to serve the SGB market across Africa. One of the key innovations offered by the SGB Fund is its tiered capital structure which allows a range of different funders to co-invest both pre-and post-launch. Shell Foundation is excited to be working in partnership with KfW Development Bank, the Dutch Good Growth Fund and Norfund to scale the initiative.” Sam Parker Director Shell Foundation

“Entrepreneurs are the driving force behind economic growth and innovation. German “Mittelstand” companies – SMEs – are a leading example. Supporting small and growing businesses at home and abroad is therefore a key priority for KfW. We are thus very pleased to partner with the leading specialist SME developer GroFin to grow this important sector in Africa.” Dr Klaus Müller Director KfW Development Bank

“Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) are essential for economic growth, innovation and prosperity of any nation. SME growth is an important engine for poverty reduction in developing countries. However, lack of access to capital is a critical limitation for this. GroFin’s loans and equity capital in local currency, its active approach to its investments and ability to act as advisor in fields such as management, financial planning and reporting, is a good starting point for establishment of viable small enterprises over time. Being a partner with GroFin is thereby an important element in Norfund’s strategy for strengthening SMEs in developing countries.” Kjartan Stigen Regional Director: East Africa Norfund

“I am pleased with the selection of the GroFin SGB Fund as one of the first investments of the DGGF. Reaching out to the missing middle in a scalable way is a huge challenge and we are impressed by GroFin’s commitment to this difficult market segment as well as its ability to innovate a fund structure aligned with the reality of those businesses.” Clemens Gerteiser, responsible for DGGF Investments within Triple Jump

For more information, please contact: Elsa Arouff – elsa@grofin.com or +230 483 4782 Marketing & Communications Administrator GroFin

Heidi Hafes – Heidi.Hafes@shell.com or +44 207 934 2221 Communications and Business Manager Shell Foundation

Laura Knierim – laura.knierim@kfw.de or +49 69 7431-6334 Project Manager KfW

Inger B-A Nygaard – Inger.nygaard@norfund.no or +47 22 01 93 93 Communication Manager, Strategy and Analysis Norfund

Claudia Vroom – claudiavroom@triplejump.eu or +31 20 7600632 Manager Investor Relations, Business Development Triple Jump On behalf of DGGF

About GroFin GroFin is an international development finance organisation with over US$500 million in committed capital specializing in the small and growing business sector across Africa and the Middle East. GroFin is a pioneer of “impact investing” at the bottom of the small and medium sized enterprise pyramid. The company is one of the very few private financial organisations capable of tackling a development challenge historically addressed by the public sector and NGO programmes. GroFin’s key differentiator is the integration of appropriate finance and tailored business support. With such support stretching beyond finance, GroFin partners with committed entrepreneurs to help them realise their aspirations and business objectives. For more information, please visit www.grofin.com.

About Shell Foundation Shell Foundation is an independent charity established by the Shell Group in 2000 to create and scale new solutions to global development challenges. They apply business thinking to major global development challenges including job creation through SMEs, urban mobility and access to energy. The Foundation deploys a blend of financial and non-financial resources to accelerate social innovation and harness private markets to deliver public benefit at scale. The Foundation works with a small number of entrepreneurial partners to identify underlying market failures behind intractable problems and co-create new social enterprises to solve them, such as GroFin. Over the last 15 years these partners have created nearly 40,000 jobs, improved over 32 million livelihoods, saved 7.9 million tonnes of CO2 emissions and secured over US$5 billion of investment. For more information, please visit www.shellfoundation.org.

About KfW Development Bank (KfW) KfW is one of the worlds leading and most experienced promotional banks. Established in 1948 as a public law institution, KfW is owned 80 per cent by the Federal Republic of Germany and 20 per cent by the federal states (“Länder”). KfW Development Bank is Germany’s leading development bank and an integral part of KfW. It carries out Germanys Financial Cooperation (FC) with developing countries on behalf of the Federal Government. The 600 personnel at headquarters and about 200 specialists in its 70 local offices cooperate with partners all over the world. Its goal is to combat poverty, secure the peace, protect the environment and the climate and make globalisation fair. KfW is a competent and strategic advisor on current development issues. For more information, please visit www.kfw.de.

About the Dutch Good Growth Fund The DGGF was established in July 2014 by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Fund provides finance and insurance to create the conditions for development related trade and investment in 68 countries. By linking aid to trade, the DGGF improves access to finance for entrepreneurs in both the Netherlands and developing countries. One specific part of the Fund focuses on the support of the missing middle in low- and middle- income countries. In order to achieve this, the DGGF provides debt, equity, mezzanine financing or guarantees to development-relevant funds that invest in local SMEs. The DGGF has set specific targets for investment funds that invest in young or female entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs in fragile states. For more information visit http://english.dggf.nl/

About Norfund Norfund – the Norwegian Investment Fund for Developing Countries – was established by the Norwegian Parliament in 1997. The organisation is the government’s main instrument for combatting poverty through the private sector development and Norfund’s objective is to contribute to sustainable commercial businesses in developing countries. Funding is provided via capital allocations from Norfund’s development assistance budget. Norfund provides equity, other risk capital, and loans to companies in selected countries and sectors where businesses lack access to sufficient capital to develop and grow. The sectors in which Norfund invests are clean energy, financial institutions and agribusiness, in addition to small and medium sized companies through investment funds. For more information, please visit www.norfund.no

After years of fits and starts, startups and big businesses are finally starting to pay attention to the solar market in rural corners of the developing world.

Over the past few months, a number of high profile investors have backed startups selling solar panels to off-grid customers across regions like Africa, India, and East Asia. Meanwhile, big solar companies have created divisions focusing on rural customers in the same areas.

That this market is now starting to mature shows how solar is increasingly affordable to people who earn less than $2 daily. At the same time, it highlights how business can lead social development—electrification, in this case—in ways that some non-profits have failed.

For the most part, wealthy countries like the U.S. and Germany have been the ones to adopt home solar panels. Home owners typically buy their solar systems out right or lease them from a third party like SolarCity  SCTY -2.29% . These solar systems tend to plug into the broader power grid.

But in regions like rural Africa, where the power grid is lacking, an entirely new strategy has had to be developed. These new solar products have relied on new types of financing, have ridden on the back of mobile technologies, and have depended on the emergence of cheap batteries. Will this type of solar product become the norm in rural off-grid areas?

The innovators

One of the rapidly growing startups tackling this market is M-Kopa, based in Nairobi, Kenya. The company was founded nearly five years ago by Jesse Moore and Nick Hughes, who was one of the original creators of mobile payment system M-Pesa. If you haven’t heard of it, M-Pesa is one of the world’s most successful mobile payment services. By some estimates, 95% of Kenyan adults use it to buy goods and services, and a third of Kenya’s GDP flows through it every year.

Moore and Hughes’ idea was to use a mobile payment system like M-Pesa as the backbone for offering credit to people who didn’t have bank accounts or full-time jobs. They decided to use it to create a pay-as-you-go financing system for solar panels, efficient lights and other appliances that piggy backed on the existing payment system, wireless networks and software.

Customers pay for the solar system, which costs about $200, with a small up-front sum followed, usually, by daily micro-payments for a year. If the customer stops paying, M-Kopa can turn the solar system off remotely.

MORE: Goldman Sachs to invest $150 billion in clean energy

Because customers can pay in small increments, it ends up making solar panels more affordable than kerosene, the traditional source of energy in rural areas. Off-grid rural home-owners have little choice but to burn kerosene indoors at night to light homes after dark, leading to respiratory problems and fires.

The average off-grid Kenyan spends $272 a year on energy, which includes $164 on kerosene, $36 on charging a cell phone (often times at charging kiosks), and $72 on batteries, as Bloomberg reported. M-Kopa says that its customers can save $750 over four years by switching to its solar kit.

M-Kopa is a financing company more than anything else. The company buys solar kits from others like startup D.Light, which in recent years has also started to focusmore on new financing methods.

They are not alone. Off Grid Electric, a startup founded in 2011 and based in Tanzania, has a similar plan to bring pay-as-you-go solar panels that run off of cell phone systems and networks to Africa as does Azuri Technologies. In India, Simpa Networks and Mera Gao Power are making a similar push.

A big business?

In recent months, investors have started to place bets on some startups that have made solid progress. Earlier this month Generation Investment Management, a London-based fund started by investors David Blood and former Vice President Al Gore, led a round of $19 million for M-Kopa. Generation has invested in energy companies like solar installer SolarCity and smart thermostat maker Nest, now owned by Google parent Alphabet.

M-Kopa’s round also included funding from Virgin’s Richard Branson and Steve Case, founder of AOL. Using the funds, M-Kopa plans to expand its business to reach 1 million homes in East Africa by the end of 2017. To date, M-Kopa has sold solar to about 280,000 homes in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda.

D.Light, meanwhile, has raised $40 million over its lifetime from investors including Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Omidyar Networks, Nexus India Capital, and Acumen Fund. The company has sold 10 million solar lanterns, which are stand alone solar devices that store solar energy, in contrast to the pay-as-you-go solar panels, which electrify an entire home.

Last week, Off Grid Electric announced that it had raised $45 million in debt financing from the Packard Foundation, Ceniarth, Calvert Foundation and other family offices to deploy its pay-as-you-go solar system across Africa. Off Grid Electric says the debt funding was the first of its kind to help deploy off-grid solar in Africa.

The company’s funding comes on the heels of $25 million in equity backing led by DBL Partners, which has also invested in Tesla  TSLA -1.45%  and SolarCity. Other investors in Off Grid Electric included SolarCity itself, Zouk Capital and Vulcan Capital, the fund of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

It’s not just startups that are eying this emerging market. Clean energy giant SunEdison  SUNE -2.05%  earlier this year hired Cathy Zoi, a former assistant secretary of energy efficiency and renewable energy with the U.S. Energy Department. She runs SunEdison Frontier Power, a division that focuses on electricity for developing countries. Challenges remain with finding banks that will provide debt financing for rural utilities customers that are at a higher risk of default on payments, Zoi said at Fortune’s Brainstorm E event earlier this year.

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The market for solar panels in off-grid areas of developing countries is still relatively small. If M-Kopa hits 1 million customers in 2016 that will still be a tiny fraction of the 2 billion people that are estimated to need off-grid electricity.

But down the road, the power grid could be pretty helpful, too. Big cities in Africa are expanding the number of homes with electricity, transforming areas that had previously dependent on kerosene lamps.

Yet off-grid solar services like M-Kopa’s prove to be cheaper than expanding the power grid and the technology could be an example of what the future of electricity would look like in rural Africa, India and Asia. At the same time, many wonder whether these regions will bypass the power grid in the same way that many of them were connected to cell phones networks without first having landline phones.

Wireless communications was not only cheaper, but also better in many ways than wired communications. Will off-grid electricity and solar emerge the same way?

By Katie Fehrenbacher

The East African nation has developed the best system of regulating and spurring off-grid power systems anywhere in the world, according to the annual Climatescope study into energy investment trends in developing nations by Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

With more than 620 million people living without access to electricity, Africa is becoming a working laboratory for financial and technical innovations that can bring power to the masses without erecting centralized power plants and costly distribution grids. The continent already has attracted $450 million for off-grid power systems fed by renewables such as wind and solar, BNEF estimates.

“Tanzania has been a pioneer for the continent,” said Nico Tyabji, an analyst at the London-based research arm of Bloomberg LP. “Its smart policy framework for small power projects and mini-grids built up a significant project pipeline.”

The nation trumped Kenya, Uganda and 16 other Sub-Saharan countries in the Climatescope rankings for a second consecutive year. BNEF analysts evaluated the markets based on energy policy and regulations, electrification rates, project developers and private investment.

An off-grid system is a small electricity network that can range from solar-powered lanterns to rooftop photovoltaic panels to miniature grids. Power is generated and distributed independent of the country’s national grid. The technologies have been touted as an answer for lowering energy poverty, particularly in rural areas.

Tanzania introduced a new regulatory framework at the end of last year that was implemented in March. It has a small power producer program that allocates feed-in tariffs in a tender process.

“Tanzania’s framework is the most developed and it has a transparent regulator that actually has a bit of power,” said Michael Gratwicke, head of Rift Valley Corp.’s energy platform. “The downside to working in the country is that the state utility is a bit uncooperative as our prices are lower than theirs.”

Rift Valley is building two off-grid hydroelectric projects in Tanzania with 1.5 and 3 megawatts of capacity, respectively. It has a pipeline with 15 more hydro plants and 2.5 megawatts of wind energy, Gratwicke said by phone from Zimbabwe where the company is based.

Tanzania-based developers of residential solar systems such as Off-Grid Electric and Mobisol have installed tens of thousands of their rooftop technologies. Their photovoltaic panels and batteries can power lights, a small refrigerator, a television set or radio and also charge mobile phones. Off-Grid Electric aims to electrify 1 million homes in the next three years.

By Anna Hirtenstein