EEF Site Visit to Sujawal

January 2, 2012

Despite the presence of overhead electricity lines, the residents of Haji Amu Sheikh, district Sujawal, don’t have electricity in their homes. When asked, the residents told us that the members of two other biraderi (clans) utilised political connections to prevent the residents of Haji Amu Sheikh from gaining access to the nearby electricity connection. Instead, the residents travel to Sujawal, some 10 kilometres away, to purchase gas or kerosene and to charge their mobile phones.

Although the reasons vary, the challenges we saw in this village are indicative of life in many in rural Pakistan. An estimated 30-40% of Pakistan villages lack grid-connected electricity (according to PPIB, Ministry of Power and Water and Pepco), and instead use kerosene or natural gas for lighting. These products can be expensive, dangerous, harmful to health and are finite resources. The absence of bright lighting solutions also impacts health and education.

Jeremy Higgs, EcoEnergyFinance (EEF) Director of Operations, and Saad Khan, a volunteer from the Association for the Development of Pakistan (ADP), recently travelled to Sujawal to identify locations for EcoEnergyFinance’s pilot of the sale of 100 solar-powered lanterns in five areas of Sindh. With local government officials, we visited four of the villages without electricity that are in the vicinity of Sujawal town.

What we found:

• A range of expenditure on gas and kerosene (100 PKR – 1000 PKR/month), reflecting differences in levels of income. Yet, the lack of electricity afflicts all of these families.
• Village residents interested in the product we demonstrated (a Barefoot Power Firefly 12 mobile) and at the price on offer!
• Residents travel to the main Sujawal town (around 10km) to purchase gas or kerosene, and to charge their mobiles.
• Decisions are made by villages as a whole – each village elder said he would have to consult with the community before making a decision. (That’s leadership!) This obviously will impact the way we approach selling the products.
• Solar-powered lanterns had been distributed by an NGO in the area in 2010, in the aftermath of the floods. Residents were unable to name the NGO, which had not been back since, but were happy with the products.
• Most of the villages asked about the guarantee or warranty provided on the products.

What we didn’t find:

• Entrepreneurs. EEF works with local NGOs to identify and train entrepreneurs, in order to provide sales and support to our customers, and so the entrepreneurs are key link in providing products to villages. In our interactions, no one stood out as a candidate for this role. In light of this, we are adjusting our approach to leverage the strengths of our partner NGOs – namely, their knowledge of the local communities – to identify entrepreneurs in the future.

What this means for EEF:

• We can’t do this alone. We knew this already, that we need to work with local NGOs and rural support programmes to access communities, but we now know that we also need to work with them to identify potential or current entrepreneurs.
• There is a need to ensure that products can be replaced if they break, which confirms our assumption.
• There is a need for solar-powered lanterns in the area, and a demonstrated use for them.
• If we’re to work in this area, we need a local partner.

All of this reinforces our belief that while EEF can do some things well, we can’t do everything. There are organisations that work well with communities, and others that excel at providing financial services, and to succeed in this area, we need to bring such organisations on board. We have an exciting trip coming up that will build on our learnings from Sujawal, so stay tuned!