Additional funding to fuel MPower’s expansion plans in Zambia

MPower Ventures developed a small and medium-scale solar energy infrastructure that allows its local B2B partners to provide lower-and middle-income households, SMEs, and farmers in peri-urban and rural areas with access to affordable energy. This approach helps to accelerate the energy transition in those regions. The company’s offering includes hardware, software, and financing solutions for customers in Ghana, Togo, Cameroon, Namibia, Hong Kong and Zambia. So far, it has sold over 42’000 units across its core markets, supporting over 1,200 small and medium enterprises (SMEs), and facilitated financial inclusion for more than 4000 people. The company has distributed over 42’000 units across seven African countries to date.

The startup is tuning its growth ambitions a gear higher to expand its operations, especially in Zambia. To fuel these plans, the company signed a USD 2 million term loan agreement with the Eastern and Southern African Trade and Development Bank Group (TDB Group) through the Trade and Development Fund (TDF), extending its loan agreement to three years. With an asset base of USD 10 billion, TDB is an investment-grade African regional development finance group, with the mandate to finance and foster trade, regional economic integration and sustainable development.

Through this transaction, the startup's subsidiary, MPower Zambia is set to increase its deployment range of plugs and play household solar devices and market driven productive use assets such as freezers, sewing machines and water pumps to more users. Additionally, MPower Zambia will construct 50 new rural energy hubs. This model allows communities to access energy for domestic and public purposes such as lighting health centres through last mile extension of power from the hubs to the nearest health facilities. The energy hubs are expected to create 30 direct and over 500 indirect jobs, thereby enhancing productivity and economic activity, and improving the livelihoods of communities that currently lack access to the electricity grid.

Commenting on this development, Gloria Mamba, Trade and Development Fund Executive Director and TDB Southern Africa Coverage Executive, said:  “We are pleased to extend this facility to MPower as it allows us to provide concessional financial solutions to SMEs, spur change and transformation within our communities, bringing about green growth opportunities and sustainable development, which is what we desire to see across the region.”

Manuel Seiffe, CEO and Co-Founder of MPower says “We are immensely grateful for the support extended by the TDB Group through the Trade and Development Fund (TDF). This loan marks significant progress for MPower as we strive to enhance access to clean, reliable and affordable energy solutions across our core markets. Large parts of Zambia and Africa still suffer from non-existent or unreliable power supply. MPower allows for leapfrogging straight to solar energy, and we are grateful for TDB’s support in achieving our mission.”