South Africa is a multi-cultural country. We have people from all walks of life. That said, there are also a lot of extremely poor communities, with people fighting a daily battle for survival. This tugged at my heart strings and fired my passion for community development.

I based my business concept on the turtle – the hard outer shell with a soft, sensitive inside. The first turtles were made from containers. The solar panels open up to afford maximum exposure to the sun. In the evening, they can be folded away for safety. This offers protection from human and natural elements.

These SolarTurtle Hubs (aka “mama” turtles) are a bit pricey but are ideal for use in mobile clinics, banks, and the like. 

The mama turtles are more expensive to get off the ground and set up, so we utilise a lot of donor funding for our community projects.

Start-up funding in South Africa is difficult to access. There are a lot of start-up ventures that pitch ideas for funding, so competition is fierce.

Angel funders and VC funding also provide funding for business start-ups. In countries where these are somewhat rare – as in the case of South Africa – we have found that participating in business pitching competitions can also work.

The problem I have found with funding is that a lot of these investors require you to prove business stability before they will add money to your project. This requires your business to operate for approximately 1 to 5 years to gain enough exposure and experience to provide the statistical analysis required. It’s a typical chicken-and-egg scenario – you need projects to gain experience, but you need experience to win projects.

This made me realise that sometimes you must work for extraordinarily little or no compensation at all just to gain the experience you need to be able to pitch for (better) paying projects.

As we aim to continuously improve and evolve our business, our second design was the SolarTurtle Mini (a fibreglass unit). These were installed in the mountains of Lesotho. This terrain is harsh and difficult to access, so we had to develop a lightweight prototype that could be transported or carried up the mountains.

Throughout all of this, I was not able to realise one part of my dream – creating a self-sustaining energy-based social business. The cost per unit had to come down considerably. My longing for community upliftment inspired the current batch of turtles – the SolarTurtle Sparks (aka baby turtles).

The goal behind the babies is to have them more affordable for small informal traders, such as street vendors. I want them able to be utilised to enhance the livelihoods of people – small business owners, etc.

As stated before, my aim is to help the community and to develop the turtles in such a way that the company can grow and sustain itself – people, planet, profit. The SolarTurtle Spark prototypes were launched at the end of July 2020 in East London.

Training and development of our staff complement is also an important aim of our business. We train our traders in all aspects of running their own solar kiosk.

Charlene, my business partner, and I are also hard at work creating software and apps for the solar turtles. We are also brainstorming some incentive programmes to reward owners and motivate other members to join our turtle family.

The incentive scheme mentioned above also promotes healthy competition between vendors and traders to encourage them to grow and promote their solar business ventures.

With the software programme, we want to incorporate e-learning and e-motivation for our vendors. I want them to have as many learning and growth opportunities as possible.

Business growth and development is a natural consequence of an evolving entrepreneurial venture. Many areas in Africa do not have the financial capabilities to make renewable energy a viable solution. That is why we have decided to set our sights on East Africa – specifically Kenya – and hope to expand soon.