The Synergies between Mobile, Energy and Water Access: Africa

This paper presents in detail the current initiatives, business models, and opportunities the mobile sector can play in Africa to better address development challenges around energy and water access. Key takeaways include:

• From an early phase of growth, pay-as-you-go solutions could have an important impact in most African countries if the right ingredients are present: working capital, efficient distribution networks, and a partnership with a mobile operator to strengthen last-mile delivery channels;
• The advent of mobile financial services offers an increasing opportunity for public and private players to leverage the payment/financing/saving mobile platform to curb the effects of poverty on the lack of access to modern energy and water services;
• The opportunity to leverage the telecom tower infrastructure exists, to pilot mini-grids and/or energy hubs with the tower as an anchor customer. This is due to energy service companies' increasing maturity, rising diesel costs, and the development of smart solutions to increase payment collection and load management in mini-grids;
• Coupled with efficient maintenance schemes, solutions such as low-cost smart hand pumps could be part of the solution towards universal reliable water access by 2030 (as mentioned in the post MDG goals).