Renewable Energy: GreenWish is planning to fix solar-powered telecommunication towers in Africa

Renewable energy is fast becoming the next gold crest for economic development in Africa.

GreenWish has earmarked $800 million for investments in solar-powered telephone towers across Africa.

GreenWish is a London-based energy company established by a former Managing Director of Morgan Stanley. The project is expected to fuel economic growth by providing power for essential services in the continent.

Energy is one of the challenges curtailing development in Sub-Saharan Africa. This problem also extends to businesses and households, thus affecting productivity and growth.

According to the International Energy Agency, Sub-Saharan Africa has the lowest rates of energy access in the world. The agency estimated that the region has about 633 million people living without reliable electricity.

"We reduce the total cost of power by 30%. Smaller towers can run entirely on solar and battery and larger ones reduce their diesel use by at least 60%," stated Charlotte Aubin-Kalaidjian, CEO of GreenWish.

In Africa, mobile telecommunication market has expanded and created a huge phone market. This portends a viable business for telecom companies.

Due to the energy problem, there is high cost of powering about 240,000 telecoms towers in the region. Thus, the development of a hybrid system that combines a solar panel, a battery and a diesel generator.

Takehiro Kawahara, a frontier power analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance stated that: "Given the cost of solar has been declining rapidly and energy costs for off-grid towers are high, tower owners are incentivized to switch to hybrid systems."

"Africa has potential remaining to increase mobile subscriptions while most other markets are reaching saturation, but energy costs can be significant in rural areas."

The project is expected to begin this year with 250 telecoms towers in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). By 2018, it is aimed to cover about 3,000 towers in 2018 and 10,000 by 2020 across several African countries.

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