It has been said time and again that whatever you do, do it with all your heart, because you do not know how it will end up.
I am more convinced now about that statement after listening to Frank Adabre, who is the CEO of Northlite Solar Ltd, on how his passion to help the people in his hometown metamorphosed into a profitable venture. Read on!
Frank Akosoba Adabre is a native of Bolgatanga, the Upper East Regional capital.
He is a product of Navrongo Secondary School and holds a degree in Public Administration from the University of Ghana.
Growing up, he saw, first hand, the problems his people went through.
Poverty was the order of the day.
Fortunately for him, though, his father was a military man and so he was able to escape the harsh grips of poverty.
After university, he spent some time in Canada and came back to his home town to embark on a social project.
The social enterprise
I went back to my community to undertake a social enterprise project.
I had four projects running.
They were in education, health, income generation, and how to sustain all these.
In the area of health, he helped link the experienced traditional birth attendants to the professional doctors and nurses to aid them in the labour ward.
The idea was for husbands to take their wives to hospital when they were in labour as many men would not want male doctors to attend to their wives.
But when the experienced traditional birth attendants were integrated into the labour ward, it became easier for husbands to take their wives to the hospital, thereby, reducing maternal and infant mortality.
The programme also subscribed children on to the National Health Insurance Scheme free of charge.
The project also provided funding for children who suffered from illnesses that were not covered under the NHIS.
In the area of education, he worked with stakeholders in the various schools to enhance the learning process.
His enterprise, through some donors, provided text books, pens, pencils, among others, to the pupils in schools in the community.
This, Frank says, had a very positive impact as it helped increase attendance and academic performance of pupils.
The third project, which was the livelihood empowerment, sought to improve the economic conditions of parents to take care of their childrens basic needs.
He did this by giving out goats to parents to rear and sell them and use the proceeds to provide for certain basic needs of their children in school.
Again, he gave interest-free loans to women in the community, especially single parents, to start petty trading that could empower them financially to take care of their childrens education.
Then the fourth one was to monitor and sustain all these projects so they benefit the community.
However, in doing all these, he realised that the schools and clinics in the community did not have electricity.
So, he decided to introduce solar panels to serve this need.
The birth of Northlite Solar Ltd
Out of his passion to continue helping the rural people, he sought funding to purchase solar panels for the schools and hospitals.
Through funds from the World Bank, Australian High Commission, and other donors, he was able to distribute about 15,000 solar systems to members of the community.
Then, rural banks pre-financed for farmers who had their savings with them.
As time went on, he realised a huge business opportunity existed in the what he was doing, as demand for solar systems came from beyond the boundaries of the north.
That was how it turned into a profitable venture for him.
Soon, they extended their operations to the Upper West, Northern, Volta, Eastern, and the Central Regions.
Now, his business has grown to the extent where he is contracted by some of the big banks in the country to install solar panels for them.
With his technical staff and partners, Northlite provides two products on-grid and off-grid.
The on-grid is tailored at larger organisations that want to reduce their cost in energy consumption.
So Northlite sets up a solar system which allows the company to pay over a period of time and own the system eventually.
The off-grid is the smaller projects he does in communities.
Challenges
The main challenge of the renewable industry, Frank says, is that it is relatively new to most Ghanaians.
He points out that understanding about the whole idea of renewable energy is low in the country and in most cases, time must be spent educating people about the advantages before they accept that it is beneficial.
Another challenge, he says, is the issue of financing.
Many banks would not advance loans to a renewable energy company because they feel they cannot assess the risk.
It will be easier to get a loan to buy a car than to get it to invest in a renewable energy company.
Meanwhile, these are very capital-intensive projects which we cannot afford to undertake without help.
Again, a challenge, he narrates, is the influx of cheap and inferior solar products on the market that has made business difficult for us.
This has made a lot of people lose trust in the quality of solar products in the country.
So, anytime you introduce it to clients, they doubt if it will last.
Vision
We want to be the leading service providers of renewable energy in West Africa in the next five years.
How government can support
For Frank, the best support government can give to renewable energy firms is setting up policies and regulations that will grow the industry.
If the policy framework allows me, a local person, to be able to develop projects and to be able to sell to off-takers, whether private or public, that will be very good.
The policy must be so flexible that a local investor can attract foreign support because our current financial system cannot provide the kind of money we need in this industry.
Advise to the youth
Most of us have become job chasers, rather than career builders.
Building a career can result in failure.
But failure makes you learn how to be a better person in future.
So, if you have the right vision and right focus, then you can succeed in building a career.