How to Build Your Topline in Africa

The relentless Kenyan sun beat down on Mama Safi's mud hut in Rabuor village. Inside, her granddaughter, Asha, squinted at a worn textbook by the dim glow of a kerosene lamp. Education was a precious commodity in Mwanzo, often sacrificed to the daily struggle for survival. But change was brewing on the horizon, carried by the wind whispering rumours of a foreign company called "SunPower."

SunPower, a company born from a vision of a brighter future for all, had set its sights on Africa. Dr Anya Petrova, a brilliant engineer with a heart full of compassion, led the charge, and Kenya was the first stop. Anya believed that affordable, clean energy could be the spark that ignited progress across the continent. After Kenya, SunPower plans to expand to 39 other African countries.

News of SunPower's arrival reached Rabuor through the village elder, Baba Mukoma. Initially, scepticism reigned. Could these outsiders genuinely understand the challenges of Rabuor? But Anya began to chip away at their doubts with her warm smile and patient explanations. SunPower engineers, alongside Rabuor's men and women, erected a gleaming array of solar panels at the village square. The day the first rays of the sun hit the panels, converting them into clean energy, was a day of celebration. The village came alive with light–market stores illuminated children reading under bright bulbs. The villagers couldn't wait to have energy in their homes. With the villagers embracing the technology, SunPower has overcome the acceptance hurdle. The second phase is deployment and monetisation.?

Across Europe, Dr Anya's colleagues are excited, but SunPower's bright-eyed marketing lead, Jack, paced his office in worry. The villagers barely downloaded the SunPower App created for onboarding users and monthly payments, so how can the excitement be real? He worried the initial hype would fade, leading to wasted effort. Jack, who is used to the Thames Valley's (England's version of Silicon Valley's) success stories, couldn't understand why Rabuor villagers loved the technology but wouldn't download the App. Their tech was cutting-edge, and their App sleek. What was missing??

Jack had a series of calls with Dr Anya before flying to Kenya to join him. There, he learnt of 2.2% smartphone penetration in Rabuor village, and their solar panel price pegged at $100 per household was beyond the consumption power of the villagers. Now, they have to rework their onboarding and monetisation model. They heard about the Chapter54 programme and joined. The Chapter54 programme offers the best-in-class content and contributors for a successful African acceleration journey.?

The Chapter54 team introduced local experts who helped SunPower understand the local context. They joined them in the bustling markets, saw how they haggled with traders, ate meals at the street restaurants and listened to the locals tell their stories, struggles, and aspirations. They began to understand their financial realities: every penny counted, trust mattered more than fancy interfaces, and flexibility was key. Jack realised his Thames Valley playbook could not be played here. He needs to write another playbook for Kenya and all other countries SunPower plans to expand into. Africa is not homogeneous. The levels of digitisation, literary, financial inclusion, purchasing power, service expectation, and usage behaviours vary across and even within countries. Etc. There is no exhaustive African playbook.?Thankfully, he is in the company of Chapter54. As a beginner, let us take Jack through this series of recaps of the second Chapter54 summit.?

Adapting organisational strategies:

Expect organisational pushback. It could be daunting to convince successful organisations to adopt strategies that have made them successful in their base. Jack has to get them to understand the existing opportunity. Still, success in a specific country means understanding customer behaviour and the responsibility to work with the customer to adapt the solution to serve them at a price point that makes sense for both parties. It's about giving customers the respect to share their views, understand what they need, and adapt its solutions. Why should SunPower adjust its strategies in Africa? Because most things you can do in Africa will most likely need to be done in other emerging markets. The market is more challenging beyond Africa. So, there are a lot of learnings that Jack's organisation can leverage beyond Africa.

"Sometimes, the most difficult stakeholder, honestly, could be your organisation" Mrs Onyeche Tifase_ Siemens Energy.?

What are some things that Siemens Nigeria did to be successful?

1. Understanding the User, Equipment adaption and Local service centre.

After learning the customer requirements for Siemens Energy, Nigeria, the next step was to convince the headquarters to get the factory to adapt the transformer to protected bushings and aluminium windings against Siemen standard exposed bushings and copper windings. Why these demands? They have scoped a massive market for the modified product. They wanted a product/transformer that works in a more dynamic environment, a transformer/product that meets the price targets and can be delivered fast. To empower locals and respond to experts' fear of visiting Nigeria because of insecurities, they set up a service centre in Nigeria. They trained the locals (companies to assemble the switchgear transformers and service equipment and develop a talent pool). This training identified skilled local contacts later used to adapt the national and local content law. Until Siemens Nigeria accomplished these, the headquarters had thought they were impossible in Nigeria.?

2. Navigating complex relationships with government officials.

Another hurdle was working with a delicate stakeholder, the government. For a government-managed power sector, all decision-making lies on the government. So, how do you forge a vision of the available opportunities (give them a sense of where they could be) and create some sense of accountability? First is empathy. You need to understand their context, their primary challenge, and why they were moving the way they did. Questions like Why is there a gap in the grid? The gap could be due to technical issues, ageing infrastructure, Lack of investment, etc. The finding could lead to the position of the service/product as the solution to address any gaps. This triggers a very transparent and honest conversation because first, the person sees that you understand things from their perspective.

The second is?advocacy.?Writing, meeting with and participating in many forums where engaging with government officials is assured to contribute to building trust and collaboration. Based on these efforts, Siemen Nigeria developed training programs to educate the relevant government ministry, culminating in a successful private-public sector collaboration. This effort led to creating a road map culminating in the initiative to transform the power sector along distribution, transmission, and generation.?

3. Then there is training.?

Siemens worked with the Lagos State Electricity Board to establish the first power academy in Nigeria. Siemens has only two power academies globally, one in India and the second in Lagos. The training centre trained students on multiple skills, such as automation, digitalisation, and electrification. This training broadened the students' capabilities to work on different customer premises and use various technologies. This training centre produced a talent pool of Nigerians who are knowledgeable, hungry to be trained and hungry to be empowered. The training centre created a pipeline of potential hires for Siemens, a win-win for all involved.

4. Facilitating partnerships with other ecosystem players.

Recommending partnerships to fix the issue where your solution cannot lead to a successful closing is crucial. Siemen, when they got stakeholder buy-in but learned that the ministry requires financial investment to make the purchase or adjustment, realised they had to recommend funders such as Development banks. If it's an issue with training, funding, local license acquisition, etc., knowing who can help the stakeholder and facilitating an introduction could lead to actualising the solution.?

5. Knowing when to change strategy.

Since the decentralisation of the power sector in Nigeria, the government's responsibility has become more related to the transmission networks. Transmission is where the headache is. The biggest challenge is getting energy from where it's produced to even where power can be distributed to the end consumers. So, the biggest issue is around transmission. That's where the government has decided to go for meaningful impact. Looking at the Nigeria Electricity Roadmap, Siemens thought it would start with generation but quickly discovered that the weakest part of the grid was transmission, so they adapted their strategy to reflect that.?

6. A win-win mindset

Generally, in all these endeavours, such as prospecting Government buy-in, adjusting equipment to local realities, hiring and training people, and facilitating partnerships, for example, it was not with the end goal that Siemens had to succeed. No, the end goal is that Nigeria has to succeed if we carry out these endeavours. Often, employees move to the competitor, but that is okay. Ultimately, the solution that Siemens provides enhances the end consumer's dignity. It's about the dignity of the African person who doesn't want to be in that situation forever, so the project won't succeed if it doesn't help the common man in the villages.?

Conclusion

Building a topline in Africa requires a journey of adaptation and collaboration. Jack's experiences in Kenya emphasised the importance of understanding the local users. Learning from Siemens Nigeria's success story, Jack understood the significance of understanding users, adapting equipment, navigating complex relationships, and knowing when to change strategies. With a win-win mindset and a focus on enhancing the dignity of the African population, Jack and SunPower were ready to embrace the challenges and opportunities that lay ahead on their path to success in Africa.

***About the authour_Based in Hong Kong and the United Kingdom, Ifunanya built her career in Nigeria across retail, commercial, and corporate banking.?More recently, her experience includes being a pioneer employee in Africa's fintech sector and working in Hong Kong’s fintech scene. She is currently undertaking a Master's degree in Finance (Analytics and Fintech) at Hong Kong Baptist University. She hopes to leverage my understanding of technology-enabled financial solutions, customer-centric approaches, and innovation in financial services to work in sectors that focus on Digital Financial Services. If you've enjoyed this piece, don't hesitate to like it, leave a comment, and share the article with others.