THROUGH grant competition, the General Electric (GE) is at the forefront of pushing President Barrack Obama’s Power Africa Initiative, which was launched barely two years ago to address the energy needs of the continent. The U.S Government’s programme aims to assist in providing some 30,000 additional megawatts of power to at least 20 million households and businesses in Africa. A highly ambitious target, the Obama administration plans to achieve this by working with partners, one of which is the GE.

To give life to the Initiative, the GE Africa is pioneering the Off-grid Energy Challenge/Awards (a $2.4m project) in conjunction with the U.S Africa Development Foundation (USADF) and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which joined the partnership this year. Innovators from Kenya, Nigeria, Liberia, Ghana, Ethiopia and Tanzania are given a $100,000 grant to support projects that offer renewable energy solutions to communities not connected to the respective national grids.

In Nigeria, for instance, four companies have already emerged winners this year, each of them presented with a $100,000 grant.

Patricia Obozuwa, the director of communications for GE Africa, is solely responsible for managing the initiative across the continent. In an exclusive interview with The Guardian in Lagos, she gives more insight as to why GE is engaged in the project, the impact so far on benefitting communities and an outlook on what to expect from the company.

Working with USAID and the USADF, Obozuwa says, “This grant competition is providing resources to spur on solutions to the off-grid, renewable energy challenges of Africa’s rural and remote power needs. This is not a moneymaking venture for GE. It our token support for this initiative and any other initiative that helps provide power to Africans.”

She says GE Africa customers, from industrial businesses and developing communities to government agencies and emergency power situations, rely on GE to increase their ability to generate reliable, sustainable power whenever and wherever it is needed, the reason her company “feels a sense of responsibility to support this laudable initiative.”

Of course, this business objective is complementary to USAID’s development agenda, and to USADF’s focus on reaching underserved grassroots groups in Africa, and providing financial and technical support to strengthen and operate sustainable and profitable businesses. Obozuwa considers this as being a means for viable, long-term solutions to widespread power needs.

She hints that GE Africa, last year, gave out $600,000 in grants to awardees in Kenya and Nigeria and will be giving at least $1.8 million in grants to explore and expand business solutions to the power deficit in rural and underserved areas in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, Liberia and Nigeria — the core Power Africa countries.

“We are looking for African solutions – from African energy service providers that already are providing biogas or solar or other renewable services and want to expand, or from African start-ups that are testing billing, metering or transmission options to grow a profitable business and to serve customers in the bottom of the pyramid. The competition also welcomes applications from communities, who are sourcing off-the shelf solutions to power their cooperatives’ processing facilities, or extend their solar powered drip irrigation system, and more,” the GE Africa’s Director for Communications explains.

On the off-grid need of the continent, Obozuwa argues that, with 585 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa (an overwhelming percentage of which are rural) living without electricity, even a large expansion of the grid will not help them anytime soon. The GE Africa’s Off-grid Energy Challenge is, therefore, focused on financing solutions that reach the underserved populations off the grid.

According to Obozuwa, the USADF’s participation in Power Africa, through the Off-grid Energy Challenge, demonstrates that the initiative is not only serving urban populations and investing in “large scale transmission and generation” deals, but is also putting attention and resources into “rural and vulnerable” communities. “We are carrying this out through a public private partnership, to have as much impact as possible, and in recognition that when businesses and governments work together, commercially-viable, profitable solutions for the common good can be realised.”

Obozuwa says: “In 2013, in the first round of the Challenge, GE Africa partnered with USADF, the U.S. government agency that is focused on economic development at the grassroots level in Africa. In this second round, we are collaborating again with USADF, and also with USAID. We are opening this up to business solutions for energy challenges in all six of the Power Africa countries.

“We appreciate this opportunity to help catalyse the work of companies and groups who are concretely finding ways to ensure that villages 500 kilometers from capital cities have access to reliable, affordable power, and can power their offices, homes, and small businesses. So that cooperatives with processing and packaging plants can operate more efficiently, increase their revenues, and improve the incomes and livelihoods of everyone involved.”

Speaking to The Guardian exclusively on the matter, Obozuwa gives credit to the GE Africa’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives, saying, “we have decided to relook at our approach and really address the challenges that Africa faces today. We have a lot of health programmes and we have spent over $68 million across Africa in the past six to seven years providing health care equipment and facilities. When you look at Africa today, there are very serious infrastructure needs because the continent represents a significant amount of the world’s population.

“GE, as a company, can help meet those needs because through our areas of business and through our proven track record and ability to innovate and really provide technology needed in infrastructure development.”

According to her, there is noticeable infrastructure gap in Africa; hence, the need for various interventions by GE on global scale but with special emphasis on the continent.

“So, we are moving into a real area of building skills across Africa…and that’s one of the things you are going to see coming in GE Corporate Social Responsibility now. We launched this programme called GE Kujenga, meaning building in Swahili; and it is a project across Africa. We call it Kujenga because we see ourselves as partners in building Africa’s sustainable future. We are empowering people with valuable skills; we are equipping communities with new tools of technology, especially in rural areas or hospitals, and we helping elevate solution to Africa’s problem.”

In this regard, Obozuwa says the GE Africa’s off-grid energy challenge fits into the company’s overall CSR strategy in the most practical terms.