Michael Saitabau, 11, often had to stop doing his homework early because the sun set before 7 pm and kerosene lamps at home would run out, meaning that he and his family would have to go to bed. "I used to skip school, because if I went without it I'd be beaten," he said.

In Kenya, a country where only 20-25 percent of people are linked to and can afford grid electricity, the sole source of light falling on the Saitabaus’ and other metal and wood homes dotting the Ngong Hills was from the stars.

When Michael's mother Faith found the time and money to buy extra kerosene from town, she would stay up making handicrafts to sell to tourists. But efforts to boost the farming family's income came at the expense of her health. “The fumes used to affect me very badly,” she said. “When I coughed it up, it was black.”

Now Kenya's leading solar company, M-KOPA, is selling a clean, low-cost, renewable alternative for the energy needs of families in rural areas.

Households make a down payment of US$35 and receive a solar home system comprising a rooftop solar panel, two hanging lamps, a flashlight, a radio and a control box to charge a cell phone. Transferring money by cell phone using a mobile money system, they pay the equivalent of $0.43 a day. After a year of payments, they own the solar system outright and have access to free energy.

M-KOPA was launched in 2012 by an international team; M stands for mobile and KOPA is the Swahili word for borrow. One of its co-founders formerly helped start M-PESA, now the world's leading mobile phone money transfer system. M-KOPA uses M-PESA’s technology to extend credit to low-income customers, many of whom don’t even have bank accounts.

Claiming to be the world's leading pay-as-you-go energy provider to off-grid homes, M-KOPA now has 225,000 customers in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. It is piloting its system in Ghana and India, with a view to expanding to other regions.

Counting 650 staff, thousands of sales agents and a $40 million per year turnover, it has put solar power back on East Africa's map by making a real business out of a fading dream to harvest natural resources for sustainable energy.

"People have been trying to sell solar in Africa for a long time but I'd say it's only been ready for five years," said Chad Larson, a co-founder and M-KOPA's finance director. He explained that the business of getting customers to repay pennies a day over the course of a year to own a solar home system is the same model he used on Wall Street to manage mortgages.

Peter George is an advisor at the Global Village Energy Partnership, a charity that works with businesses in developing countries to increase access to energy. He agreed that the market has evolved tremendously in the past five years. Before, what he called a “donor-driven market" involved Westerners giving solar energy away, distorting the market, while an influx of cheap, often unregulated Chinese lamps almost killed it.

"People really lost faith in solar," he said.

But, he added, companies like M-KOPA have worked out how to provide long-term financing services using advances in technology and mobile money for a model that "mimics the spending patterns on kerosene, candles and other consumables." The average off-grid Kenyan would normally spend an estimated $0.50 a day on energy for a lifetime, and the costs of kerosene, batteries and cell phone charging services often add up to a household's biggest monthly expenditure after food.

Around 150,000 M-KOPA customers are repaying loans for a system that can be cut off using GSM technology if they default. Chad Larson said that about 60 percent of customers pay their loans within a year, 30 percent within 18 months and the rest default. Since most people pay something, M-KOPA's loss rate is 5 percent.

Of the 75,000 people now enjoying free power, 20,000 have continued making daily $0.43 payments to obtain other M-KOPA products including stoves, bicycles and rooftop rainwater collection systems. The company is rolling out a low-cost television and hopes to fulfill demands for an energy-efficient tablet and refrigerator soon.

"We think that around half the country can afford our product and will save money using it," Larson said. With extremely prohibitive grid connection fees and repeated election promises to electrify rural areas ringing hollow, M-KOPA has changed its target of 1 million customers by 2018 to 4 million by 2020.

When the Saitabaus have finished paying off their loan, they want to buy two extra lamps for the bedroom their three children share, to allow Michael to continue being a shining student. "I'd use it to read a lot. I'd love to read a book in bed," he says.

After that, Faith wants to use their energy savings to start a college fund for Michael, whose dream of becoming a pilot and flying through the starlight to America is looking ever brighter.

For more information

Website: http://www.m-kopa.com/

Video: http://www.sparknews.com/fr/video/m-kopa-solar-making-solar-energy-affordable-all

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