They are the pepper in the spicy chicken at a restaurant you may know. They were also the ingredient used by a Canadian company to build the first solar power plants in Malawi.
About a tenth of Malawi’s grid power now comes from two new solar plants built by Toronto-based JCM Power. I 60-megawatt Salima solar plantjointly owned with InfraCo Africa Ltd., became the country’s first solar facility in 2021. Golomoti arrived a year later, and its five-megawatt battery is the first such utility-scale storage system in sub-Saharan Africa.
They are badly needed – no later than 2023, less than 16 percent of Malawians had electricity.
But there are reasons why the sun has taken so long to arrive, despite the obvious need and the country’s hot climate.
Loris Andrys, a Cape Town-based senior business developer at JCM Africa, said that before those projects, Malawi was a “frontier market,” where regulations for solar power projects were non-existent. Self-development was part of the plan to build Salima and Golomoti.
Another challenge was that the Malawian government pays JCM in Malawian kwachas, which are volatile compared to other currencies and can quickly depreciate.
JCM Power’s solution was to plant kwachas in community farming of African bird’s eye pepper and surrounding areas on solar panels. These, too, are sold in US dollars, especially at Nando’s Peri-Peri, a chain of chicken restaurants (there are locations in Canada) with their signature hot sauce.
“This is the first, new way of how we can adapt,” Andrys said.
Africa’s opportunity for the sun
According to the International Energy Agency, Africa has it 60 percent of the world’s leading solar resourcessince most of it is near the equator, with less dust and cloud cover.
Meanwhile, there was a drive to unite the 600 million Africans no access to electricity by 2030 to comply with The goal of the UN of universal access. Africa’s energy demand is expected to grow eight times by 2050reports the Global Africa Business Initiative, organized by several United Nations organizations.
Amos Wemanya, a senior energy consultant at Power Shift Africa, an African organization that promotes energy, said that many African countries are used to relying on imported fuel with variable prices. Solar, he said, “offers an opportunity for energy sovereignty.”
Solar reaches record growth in Africa by 2025, with 54 percent increase in solar installationsthe Global Solar Council reports. That happens in two ways: roof systems are financed by individual homeowners and utility scale plants connecting to national grids, viz considered the cheapest option providing access to electricity to nearly half of Africa’s people who need it.
Large plants are often subsidized by foreign aid.
While China again other European countries are major investors in clean energy in Africa, some Canadian companies also have projects on the continent.
While private financing accounts for nearly two-thirds of investment by 2024, the IEA says public and development capital is important in new markets or “non-tradable areas.”
JCM Power is managed by five development banks, including FinDev Canada, a federal Crown corporation mandated to support businesses in developing markets and promote sustainable development.
Apart from Malawi, JCM is developing new opportunities in Namibia, Botswana, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Congo and Tanzania.
Andrys said that compared to the company’s projects in other regions, such as South Asia, those in Africa are small and “very challenging.”
But he said “we will stay in Africa, because that is where we can touch the most people.”
Those impacts can go beyond empowerment itself. For example, FinDev Canada requires JCM to ensure that women get leadership opportunities in places like Malawi, still facing the challenges of gender equality.
Grace Kalowa, who was first hired as an area gender mainstreaming specialist, is now the Malawi country manager for JCM Power, and a quarter of the 63 employees at the Malawi plant are women.
Although JCM uses development funding, private investment is playing a growing role in African solar projects, as public funding and development of energy projects in Africa has fallen by a third over the past decade, largely due to the reduction in spending by Chinese development banks, The IEA reports.
Solar panels are proliferating in the salt flats of western India, and farmers tell CBC South Asia reporter Saliah Shivji that the technology has completely changed their lives.
Stardust Solar of Vancouver is launching its first franchise in Zambia
Stardust Solar Energy is a public, Vancouver-based company involved in growing private equity investments in solar in Africa, often in more established markets.
Zambia added 139 MW of solar last year. This year, Stardust launched a 35-hectare, 30 MW solar project there through its new local business, Megatricity Energy.
Stardust already has more than 100 franchises in Canada, the US and the Caribbean, but this is the first time in Africa.
Eamon McHugh, the company’s director and chief operating officer, said it was important for Africa to use more energy, “and solar is becoming one of the fastest growing sources of energy.”
Franchisees Ochas Kashinge Pupwe and Lee Lewanika Simbeye launched a franchise with Stardust in Biloxi, Miss., last year and almost immediately talked about moving to Zambia, where they grew up. The team made a power purchase agreement with a national company, bought land in a copper belt area in Zambia, and the franchise was officially launched in September.
McHugh said that they are currently conducting geological tests – “to make sure that there are no emeralds and copper in the world first.”
He expects the plant to start producing power this summer and have a total capacity of 30 MW by 2027.
Stardust provides services such as engineering, financing and training, while franchisees are responsible for managing the construction of the premises.
McHugh said they are looking for other opportunities, such as being able to train in schools and install solar in homes, clinics and schools in the area by using the local “Green Cities” fund.
He added that although foreign funding is often the most important for solar projects in Africa, the franchise model benefits communities. “We’re not just a big company that’s going to build a solar plant. We’re making local businesses grow and become solar businesses.”
But he also thinks this could be good for Stardust itself: “There’s a great opportunity there.”
A warning is necessary for sustainable solar
Carole Brunet is associate professor at INRS (Institut national de la recherche scientifique) in Montreal and lecturer at Polytechnique Montreal o studies the social and environmental impacts of the global energy revolution. He studied solar projects in Morocco, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Madagascar and South Africa.
He said development banks have many guidelines to encourage responsible, sustainable development and maximize the benefits of such projects. That could include developing local agriculture, ensuring local training and employment opportunities or promoting gender equality.
“Unfortunately… I have never seen [solar] power plants where the goals of sustainable development are respected to the extent that they should be respected,” he told CBC News in French.
He said some solar developments are happening too quickly for the impacts to be properly managed.
Some projects take up a lot of land that communities may lose access to, cut down trees that provide shade and cooling, or use scarce resources like water for things like cleaning panels, while providing less employment than expected, causing tension with local communities.
Wemanya at Power Shift Africa agreed that this is possible, especially if solar is quickly deployed in utility-scale projects.
He thinks this can be reduced, however, if local communities organize and advocate for their needs, and if solar deployments are linked to local industries that are developing, such as mining or irrigating local crops.
He believes that may also encourage private investment, because “investors [will] make sure … they are value-creating forces.”
