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M-KOPA, the 2015 Zayed Future Energy Prize Small and Medium Enterprise category winner, is to devote its US$1.5 million award to launching a new internal training and development programme, run from its Nairobi headquarters. Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan’s legacy will be honoured by naming the Nairobi training facility, The Zayed Centre, in recognition of the prize’s impact.
M-KOPA’s global training programme will provide technical and business skills development to employees, sales agents and partners of the Kenyan ‘pay-as-you-go’ energy services firm, both onsite and remotely. By 2018, M-KOPA plans to provide training to over 1,000 staff and 3,000 sales agents across East Africa, in addition to external licensing and distribution partners in Africa and Asia.
His Excellency Dr Sultan Al Jaber, UAE minister of state and director-general of the Zayed Future Energy Prize, said: “Expanding clean energy access is critical to economic growth and the alleviation of poverty in the world. Training a workforce in clean technology solutions will provide long-term skills, which will empower communities to enhance their future and ensure widespread energy access.
“At the heart of the Zayed Future Energy Prize is the principle that education is critical in improving energy access, energy conservation and energy security. By using the prize funds to establish the Zayed Centre training facility, M-KOPA reinforces that belief and Sheikh Zayed’s vision of spreading knowledge and enabling sustainable growth.”
The first company headquartered in Sub-Saharan Africa to win the Zayed Future Energy Prize, M-KOPA is the market leader in ‘pay-as-you-go’ energy services for off-grid customers. It combines mobile payments with GSM sensor technology to enable the leasing of solar power systems. Since its launch in October 2012, M-KOPA has connected more than 150,000 homes in East Africa to solar power and is adding over 500 new homes each day.
Jesse Moore, co-founder and managing director of M-KOPA said: “With the recognition and backing of the Zayed Future Energy Prize, we will continue to develop our exceptional team in order to reach millions of customers as soon as we can. To recognise the impact that the Prize will have on developing M-KOPA’s talent in clean energy, we will be naming our Nairobi training facility, the Zayed Centre.
“We've proven that our technology can scale and - thanks to great work by our team - we've already reached a pace of 500 plus sales per day in East Africa. And yet there is demand for our solution in tens of millions of homes.”
In seven years, winners and finalists of the Zayed Future Energy Prize have touched the lives of over 150 million people – generating 190,000 MWh from renewables, reducing 800 million tonnes of carbon emissions, providing safe drinking water to 6 million people and introducing 350,000 people to sustainable solutions and management best practices.
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