If Different Perspectives Are Useful We Need Invite Them Into Our Silos …

Reader discretion advised: The author is a generalist and this blog note is entirely biased ….

McKinsey sent me an email today with a copy of one of their “classic” articles from 2015 suggesting that 4 types of behaviours account for 89% of leadership effectiveness. The link is here, and a good read it is too. To save you the trouble, they are i) effective problem solving ii) results orientation iii) being supportive and iv) seeking different perspectives. I like this list because it reinforces my self image as a leader, when I’ve had that opportunity.

Currently however, I’m a consultant, brought in for a specific task, working with the client staff for a limited time, and outside of the leadership team. My sector is development, and within that equipment and solar energy financing. I can be very specific, becuase the development sector is very siloed.

The quality of “seeking different perspectives” got me thinking. Personaly I like to hear different perspectives, and discuss them, even when this is considered a little impolite. Better to just let people express themselves and leave it at that. Professionally as a consultant. you are hired becauase you already match the profile that has been developed, so you do not tend to find different perspectives. When you first engage with a client in energy for instance, you quietly try to establish what the established positions are on on grid versus off grid; stand alone systems vs minigrids; government vs. private sector. You are welcome and indeed expected to push boundaries on technical aspects such as artificial intelligence, underwriting techniques and payment mechanisms, but it is not your role to challenge the orthodoxy.

My univited feedback on the energy sector is that it is almost fossilised in its silos. In addtion to the ones already mentioned we have geographical silos with little or no exchange between LAC and SSA. Teams align with the big language blocks, of course. The biggest barriers are between development and the private sector. Leasing for example is a huge global finance sector, accumulatling knowledge and applying technolgy since the 1970’s, and yet the solar sector is discovering the financing of income generating equipment (ie leasing) as if for the first time.

I worked for a decade for General Electic. At one point it was the company with the longest continuous presence on the DOW Industrial Average. At its peak it employed more than 200,000 people. Its scale and depth of support from the markets allowed it to invest time in creating managers for the long term. It did this by moving them around its divisions based on their skill set and potential, rather than their technical knowledge about where they were going. This approach was possible by having a strong grid of technical functional leadership to support the commercial leadership. The benefit was corss fertilization – the sharing of different perspectives. In my time there I worked in Power Systems, Internal Audit, and GE Capital. Each experience enhanced my skills, and based on my progress seemed to generate payback for the company.

I urge the development sector to be braver on this. Lets hire from other places, in development and outside. Lets mix geographies and cultures. Lets continue to balance our gender and diversity. There are great challenges ahead. Artificial intelligence is not something where we can draw from an existing pool of experts. We need to learn how to harness it, so lets have the best, most diverse teams of people sitting around the table. For climate finance it is a different challenge, where the skills do exist, but are scattered in different places. We are moving the pieces to achieve a different outcome so lets indeed assemble the teams from whereever we can find those skills.

Different perspectives are good. Lets be purposeful in getting them

A New Arrival – My First AI Authored Funding Request

I remember so well the first lease that I funded with my new leasing company, back in 2003. It was the start of something that completely transformed my career. Thousands of leases later, I still can feel the nervousness, the thrill. Did I do it right? Would it also be my first default? What would this baby company become?

Other firsts followed … my first investment in Africa, first consultancy with a Multilatera Agency, and now another. I have received an application for funding for my private program of sponsorship, and it gives me a taste of what is to come for myself and my clients.

Every couple of years I aim to sponsor a young entrepreneur with a combination of skills input, financial support and mentorship. To date I have done this 5 times and I admit, none of the people I have sponsored have managed to establish a long term, self funded business. When I end the support within months, the business runs into the sand. Each time I try to screen better, and to adapt the mix of support. I apply the structures from my professional experience to ensure a discipined approach to the screening, reporting and mentoring.

And so to my latest round. My candidate is supremely intelligent, has a naturally structured and analytical approach to information, and most importantly has a clear view of what they want to do. I set them the tasks of writing a detailed plan with high level budget for the first year of the project. In this case I am going to support them to get the company set up properly, and to do 3 or 4 test runs of their core activities, to learn and start to adapt to the reality of putting plans into practice. I did a number of sessions to help them simplify their strategy, and to pick these pilots. On this basis I asked them to write the plan for the year, as this would both be immediately useful for them, and also get them into the habit of fund raising documentation. Their ongoing funding depended on this document as an output for the coming month.

And so after some prodding, the document finally arrived. Having dealt with my candidate already over months I was expecting great structure, with some issues on writing style, and good numbers if not necessarily well organised. Certainly I was expecting to receive a first draft, and to work together on this as part of our ongoing skills exchange.

Oh my goodness – what I received was a stunning piece of development fund rasing copy. It gave every impression of having been written by an American MBA student, shortly to move into the senior management of a recently set up NGO. Not a word out of place. My still rather nervous candidate had been transformed into an expansive, arms around the shoulder, lets save the world together member of the development sector global elite. The strategy and the pilots were beautifully laid out with the constant refrain of how, together, we were going to have such an important impact and transform lives.

It was not just the style and fluency that was out of synch. The document lacked all but the highest level numbers. There were no tables where the detail could be found. Anything that might require the dual level of writing and integrating separate costing, was absent, as was anything that reflected the personality of my candidate. This document could have been written for any proposal, given a few basic instructions to an AI program. I know, becuase I tested it.

The painful discussion followed, and I am still debating how to go forward. The use of the tool is not the issue. The use of the tool to avoid work is, plus the risk that it reflects an onoing lack of understanding of what the project will require at a personal level of commitment. The hardest barrier to overcome is the revalation of a willingness to deceive. In credit and collections we can work with a client who cannot pay, but not with one who will not pay. This is not looking like a yes ….

Im glad that my first experience has been so manageable, and so detectable. This is just one young person experimenting on the internet. The lesson is that it would be so easy to add the layers to make this better. All that is required is more specific instructions to the AI, and the mixing human editing with the AI generated text. In this case the disconnect between the standard AI has already reached and the obvious skill levels of the candidate were glaring. The fraudsters are much, much cleverer.

P.S. My first lease worked out fine. Repaid without a single default. A lucky quirk of statistics becuase, of course, my portfolio had its fair share of delinquencies and fraud

AI, Blockchain, Bio-metrics, Advanced Data Analytics and more will all be needed to combat “Deep Fake” loan and grant applications in Development Finance

Look at the media discussion of AI at present. It is dwelling on job losses, organisational change, efficiency of content creation for marketing and copy. Every now and then you will see a piece on how”deep fake” outputs are already being used to manipulate politics, and produce pornography. 

As always the arms race of technology has the potential for bad as much as good. Be sure that those clever people who are operating global scams to persuade you to marry them and invest in bitcoin are already deploying AI. Their fearsome intelligence is already looking for other lucrative gaps in the market where people and organizations can be separated from their money because they simply cannot believe that what is happening to them is a sophisticated fraud.

I am concerned about Development Finance. Money flows from rich to poor in a process where the need to hit development outflow targets is managed through an (electronic) document based bureaucracy, backed up with very low penetration audits. The bureaucracy depends on painfully developed processes that are very slow to change. A well written funding application backed up with entirely predictable documentation presented by intelligent motivated entrepreneur is very well received.

AI can very easily prepare an application, a business plan, years of consistent numbers backed up with convincing documents. The depth of quality that is possible is very likely to pass the checks that currently exist. Finding people to play the role of management on a conference call, and setting up for the site visit will perhaps one of the easier parts of the fraud.

So, development organisations need to be seeing AI as a clear and present danger and already adapting. AI can be used as well to combat potential frauds. Applications and data analytics already exist to spot inconsistencies not only in data, but also in images, water marks. Blockchain offers the way to ensure veracity and authenticity of documentation.

The range of actions for any funding organisation is long. There are going to be painful and embarrassing losses. It would be very foolish to imagine that this kind of fraud will take time to arrive in the Development Finance space. We need to act now

AI is going to transform Fund Raising, Technical Assistance and Credit Lines

As a consultant I have already thought about how AI can affect my work supporting funding agencies, and SMEs directly in the areas of fund raising, credit lines and technical assistance. My initial selfish conclusion is that it will most favor those who are creative (not me) and those who have experience (me). Just like any resource it needs to be pushed and prodded by the creatives to find its best applications. And as something that has the power to change organizations and how we work, it needs management and integration by people like me who are comfortable organizing. Unfortunately those middle managers who are not creative and whose organisational and team management are limited are the ones most likely to find their roles under pressure. 

In the development finance sector I believe the impact of AI in technical assistance will be generally positive. The gathering of relevant information, the preparation of plans and strategies, training modules, will all be easily and cleverly automated. For credit lines and fund raising the preparation of applications will be much easier. However, from the funders perspective the potential for fraud is intimidating. Underwriting and audit could become paralyzed with the need for face to face meetings and original documentation. 

Both the good and the bad will be upon us before we know it. Our development organisations are not known for their agility but they could power a great good by immediately setting up teams to look at how Technical Assistance can be expanded and costs reduced using AI. Finance and underwriting teams should already have a strategy in place to use AI positively to streamline information exchange and application processes, balanced by a cold hard reassessment of how fraud is likely to change using AI.

To some extent we can piggyback the commercial credit sector which is far more exposed and therefore more proactive in adapting to credit fraud through AI. Technical Assistance is uniquely ours … prepaid consulting whose purpose is to share skills and knowledge and accelerate development. Lets lead this and use AI to accelerate those benefits through the chain.

As a first step why not go to your local friendly AI app and type in ” How can SMEs in developing markets leverage AI to improve operations and enhance fund raising efforts” At the very least you will be much less inclined to ask a consultant to answer the same question without a significant discount. At best you will see how the pressure is now on us to separate out information collection, analysis, presentation, and implementation. From my standpoint, it enables a faster transition to the more interesting work, namely helping a team to get to their goal faster

Climate Finance – Lets Leverage What We Already Know

Climate Finance is a new area for financing. It is not a new type of financing. So to accelerate the impact lets make the links to the skills and funds already in place, and not imagine we are redefining banking….

Prior to solar financing there was leasing and project financing. We found a new asset and someone decided that it needed its own name. In the process we forgot most of the basics about consumer lending, the unforgiving reality of cost control and scale, lowest cost of financing, and for mini grids, that without demand management, your project would never make money.

There were new elements as always with a new asset. Was the technology reliable? How could we align repayment terms with a rapidly reducing cost? How would people use the technology and therefore what was the “stickiness” of the asset or service. But for anyone already in leasing and project finance, these things could be fairly rapidly learned. However, solar finance became its own thing and most of this knowledge was ignored as new teams and experts materialized around this new but not so new sector.

Are we about to do the same thing with Climate Finance? The key elements are understanding the projects and technology particularly mitigation and adaption; sourcing and structuring the funding; capacity building with governments, banks and borrowers; ensuring draw down by kick starting project pipelines and with the inevitable risk sharing and incentives.

Within my network banks are struggling to match which of their current projects are eligible – because they did not wake up yesterday to a pipeline of Climate Finance deals. Borrowers who think they might be eligible are seeing finding sources that were previously labeled “energy” drying up, while its not clear how to access these new climate funds. On a personal level I am seeing this too in new programs which are getting off the ground looking for Climate Finance Experts. Who are these people and where do we think they will come from?

All to say that we might consider the best way to expand finance into climate is to make the connections to all the work and expertise that already is in the system . Lets not get carried away thinking that this latest shift requires a revolution in skills or in implementation. if we do that we risk an artificial delay in funds flow to our borrowers and beneficiaries. And getting the money in the hands of the people who are doing something is the point of what we do … not changing the name.

Financing Electric Motorcycles and Three-Wheelers in SSA for Impact and Profit

To achieve climate and social impact goals, those of us in solar need to start thinking much bigger, and working outside of our silo. New projects need to combine elements of the PAYGO model, demand generation for mini grids, pulling in vendors and manufacturers to support market growth, working to excite and motivate local commerical banks, and helping governments achieve multiple climate and social targets from single projects. I am promoting the model of financing electric 2 and 3 wheelers as a attratvie actionable example, and am looking for partners to get this off the ground, or to accelerate an existing project.

A project to electify 2 and 3 wheelers in large urban centres in SSA could pull together current and new elements to hep structure new sustainable businesses, profitable financing for banks, livelihood improvement for users gender gains to include and empower women, pull in vendors in India and China, improve urban transportation, clean the city air and quieten our lives. By learning from existing formal and informal motorcycle financing, rapid scale up could be achieved with government support to mandate or incentivise the switch over to e-vehicles

The following points are relevant

·       Bodas and three wheelers are an essential part of transport infrastructure in SSA and are very suitable for replacement by evs

·       They are currently financed by specialist companies [eg Tugende Uganda] but mainly by private individuals renting out bikes on a daily basis. 

·       Bike users are mainly men [in EA] who make their living from transport

·       EV manufacture for 2 and 3 wheelers is ramping up in India and China with a major opportunity to integrate vendor finance from the beginning

·       The models for bike financing are well established but still sub scale

·       There is significant potential to better manager recycling, charging, and the access for women to this income generating activity

·       A well organised financing approach can support a secondary market which can further extend the reach of the initiative

The emergence of e-vehicles is an opportunity to pull in the learnings from vehicle finance globally, PAYGO and fintech locally, utilise climate funding immediately, and to engage new manufacturers to provide vendor finance and support the secondary market and recycling from the beginning.

If you would like to engage more on this topic with a view to making it happen, get in touch via LinkedIn on http://uk.linkedin.com/in/clearcape

From Financing Solar Home Systems to Productive Use Equipment – Get Ready to Partner

Pay As You Go []PAYGO] Solar was a game changer for the energy access. Fresh thinking combined new reliable low cost solar systems with software and mobile money, to enable a breakthrough on costs and distribution. It also represented a leap forward to reach willing, credit worthy rural customers which had been chronically badly served by utilities and traditional financial institutions. 10 years on the gains in access are very real, but we can also see the limits to the model. PAYGO on its own cannot resolve the basic reality that even $100 systems remain out of the reach of many many rural households. The PAYGO model did not make credit risk dissappear, though it did provide more data, and showed that there was a role for remote control of equipment to encourage repayment on a no-pay no-service basis. So while PAYGO companies are adapting, the next phase of development in the off-grid sector is starting. Next up is to support rural households to move up the energy ladder – to provide more than just light and phone charging, and to enable access to entertainment, refrigeration, and equipment that creates income.

PREO has published a report saying that the potential market for Productive Use Equipment is as high as $800BN. Such a forecast is very attractive to companies and policy makers, particularly as it comes with the promise that the owners of such equipment will be generating income, benefitting the economy, and able to pay for the equipment and future upgrades. Money is already flowing to support companies who are developing efficient technologies for productive use. Its a good time to think about how the customers will pay for the new equipment. The PAYGO business model in its current form will not work, and we have considerable work to do to build a new financing ecosystem.

There are four major challenges ahead. First, productive equipment is currently costing up to 10 times the average PAYGO system. Secondly productive equipment is not ‘Plug and Play’ It needs site preparation, technical training, and market support. Any financing requires technical assistance both for the lender and the borrower. Thirdly there is a big difference from a financing point of view between stand alone equipment, and equipment that is connected to a minigrid. Finally government and development support for livelihood improvement is concentrated in other sectors such as agriculture, and there is not much history of constructive cooperation between development silos.

One of the key elements of the access revolution powered by PAYGO was that PAYGO companies were able to make progress on their own by combining in house both distribution and financing. In this next phase this will not be possible. The technical assistance that is necessary is too diverse. Aspects of the PAYGO model will be essential such as remote monitoring and low cost payment mechanisms.

The sources of finance for productive use equipment can come from a variety of sources, and indeed amybe more is available from non ‘solar’ sources such as agriculture and water. Terminology is important. Solar power may not be the key feature of financing that is aiminig to improve livelihoods. It may be more important to emphasise the cost advantages of solar power over diesel, or the potential to hit climate change targerts when equipment is powered by renewable energy.

From a financing perspective equipment which is connected is more attractive. Connected customers are closeer together, easier to reach and easier to support. There may be a payment history which can represent important credit information. Financial Institutions are likely to be agnositc about whether customers are connected to minigrids or utilities. The important feature is scale and cost to serve. This opens up an interesting possibility of off grid and on gird cooperating in initiativces to stimulate demand and persuading banks to finance their customers.

Looking down the road I see partnerships. To crowd in funding we need to look beyond solar to other sectors. The same is true to solve the techncical assistance conundrum we need to persaude ur agriculture colleagues to share their expertise and combine it with the lessons learned from last mile finanicing through PAYGO. To motivate governments we need to persuade them that there is a new path to combining livelihood improvement goals with achieving climate change targets through deploying more productive use equipment powered by renewable energy.

And then there is vendor finance. In other sectors such as auto, appliances, software, manufacturers participate in expanding the market by supporting directly or indirectly end user financing. IN the case of PURE, most equipment is coming from China. Can we start that discussion?

Off Grid Solar Needs Government Supported Vendor Financing – That Means China

Ten years now in off grid financing in Sub Saharan Africa and I have never worked directly with a Chinese Bank or state actor.  Thats unusual because all the equipment I have financed is made there.  It feels like there is a very real wall when it comes to overcoming market challenges in a way that involves all the stakeholders.  Standing back I have to wonder why the export oriented Chinese state banks are not providing end user financing to drive scale into the Africa.  With 100 million and more unserved household customers, there are not many bigger markets.

My reasoning is not groundbreaking.  Sales for cash and without financing are a very small fraction of sales made with credit.  This is true in big poor markets just as much as big rich ones though for slightly different reasons.  In both cases people and organisations like to pay as they use.  However in rich markets this is as much a matter of convenience while in poor ones is a matter of  necessity.  Poor households and small companies do not have reserves of cash to buy equipment in one single transaction.

Vendor finance was a breakthrough when it became clear that the credit risk was more than compensated by the huge increase in sales that results from offering credit.  Originally in the US this was done by the appliance manufaturers and leasing companies when the banks refused to engage and take the risk.  The vendors benefitted from manufacturing AND finance margins.  The leasing companies used volume discounts on buying and additional income from fees and the secondary market.  Never ones to lead when they can follow, the banks gradually got involved.  Government helped with substantial tax benefits to encourage the purchase upgrading of captial equipment and appliances

We face the same situation now in off grid solar with clear demand but low bank participation.  We have huge demand in Africa, and large scale manufacturing in China, but the market is functioning only with relatively small amounts of development grants, soft loans and venture capital.  Numerous studies show the amount of financing needed is in the billions of dollars, and there are only two places to get that kind of money – big governments and the international capital markets.  We are talking and promoting to the latter.  I advocate we do a lot more work on the former.

For the Chinese government and banks, supporting manufaturing is already something they do..  Vendor financing could also be done in a variety of ways.  They could lend to the manufacturers to set up their own financing vehicles.  They could set up a trade bank to purchase receiveables of African customers, mixing portloios from different countries to balance credit and currency risks.  They could provide guarantees and other loss mitigation instruments to support and encourage Chinese banks to engage.

This blog is a first step for me.  In ten years I have never been in a negotiation with Chinese funding represented directly.  When I hve done market studies to look at all available forms of financing for SMEs, or PAYGO companies, or MFIs to particpate in the off grid sector, I have never managed to talk to my Chinese peers.

So if anyone reading this can help me change this and get these conversations going, reach out.

The Perils of Being a Baby Giant – Hard Times in Store for PAYGO

I say too often when talking about PAYGO Solar that there is no such thing as a small mobile phone company.  I remeber how one of Hong Kong’s richest entrepreneurs invested in the sector back in the 1980’s, initially picking the ‘wrong’ technology.  However such was the scale of his investment, the licences, the human capital, and the number of customers he built up, it all worked out in the end.  But even he is no longer in the sector having long ago sold out to one of the remaining global players.  Mobile telephony moved very rapidly from the lab to national, then international and finally global marketplace.

PAYGO Solar is not mobile telephony, but it is the part of the mega infrastrructure markets where there be giants, and only giants.  It is also part of another huge sector, namely financial services.  Here you can find smaller companies, and even small banks, but they tend to be very specialised fee making institutions, or brokers feeding the big players.  When you are making small amounts of cash from thousands if not millions of customers, you get big in order to be efficient both in terms of transaction costs and costs of capital.  When the business is standardised, expensive senior management can cover a lot of territories.  And then there’s data where scale becomes a positive feedback loop of insights and product refinement opportunities.

The PAYGO sector has seen rapid growth as early movers hoovered up grants, equity and debt.  There can be little doubt that the number 1 goal was new accounts.    We had our own little positive feedback loop going where lots of funding was channeled into top line growth, which became the most attractive PAYGO feature for new investors.   As a result we saw the early movers establish an unassailable lead in fund raising and growth.  Those 5 companies looked so big and strong from the outside – destined to dominate perhaps

But even before COVID the non negotiable commercial challenges of low value high volume consumer finance had started to manifest themselves.  Low transation costs are fundamental.  Higher losses are possible but only if you can predict them with reasonable accuracy, and you have the gross margins to cover them.  Your funding structure needs to be lowest cost and very well structured, and you have to have the cash to pay back your loans on time.

The PAYGO sector had not yet met the challenges of large scale consumer finance, and COVID has made these challenges completely irresistible. Perhaps we felt like we were already big in comparison to the past – but COVID has revealed we are just babies.   It looks like customers are not paying, even if they can, as they take the payment holidays the goverments are mandating.  The growth engine has stopped, and so has cash flow.  Lenders and shareholders who were already frustrated at the lack of cost discipline can now see no way to get cash out, even in the medium term.  We have no reserves – only the promise of more growth.  In this situation the backroom functions of portfolio management, cash and cost control take over.  At least one company has already appointed a hard core finance person to replace the growth oriented CEO.

The prospects are grim not only for the baby giants that we thought we were, but it is hard to see who would risk any serious commercial money in a start up PAYGO company anymore.  I predict a very brutal consolidation at very low cents on the dollar.  New companies and new markets will swing back to being much more dependent on development aid.   Is there any upside? In my opinion, yes.

First the business model is proven.  No one doubts anymore that it is possible to combine low cost quality solar, mobile money and data to offer a level of access to rural populations.  Utility companies are looking at new models.  Governments can see a way to enhance energy access strategies by combining gird and off grid.  Second, the survivors will be formidable.  They will run their businesses better.  They will structure their funding better and the investors will be more realistic.

As to how we can continue to spread the access into new markets?  I believe  there are two options  – a form of franchising, and then broking.  I belive PAYGO solar will end up  end up as part of large regional, if not global utilities, in energy, telecoms or financial services, or huge partnerships between these players.  In this case new companies – start ups must make themselves attractive consolidation targets.  Development money should insist on standardised models with data and credit managementment based on well established processes.   Cost efficency from the start, and a clear view of total organisational health [ie profitabiltity] is a must from the start.  In this way even new companies have an exit based on real value.  They are worth consolidating.

However, there is an easier less costly route which is brokerage.  If we can bring just some few banks on board to hold the receivables at a national or regional level, we can set up networks of brokers managing the last mile distribution and funneling the consumer credit on standardised terms through to these banks.  This is a strategy that lies between expensive and cimplicated PAYGO companies on the one side, and unsophisticated last mile agents on the other.    It is more attuned to the reality of low initial investment combined with immediate, same year fee income.  Locally based, minimally capitalised brokers source the deals and had off to institutions that can mnage portfolios that realise income over the medium term and have the systems to support this.

Vamos a ver

 

Integrating What We Know Into Our Off Grid COVID 19 Response

Off grid energy has been small but growing.   The installed base is already in the millions.  Businesses are present across the continent though still not in all countries.   It is increasingly seen as an important part of electrification, and as a result investment continues.  It has been exciting to be involved in forward looking change impacting people and societies for the better

Now COVID 19 is sweeping across the world, irresistible in its impact.  The off grid sector becomes just one tiny part of local and national and regional economies in shut down. In addition to the tragedy of lost lives and suffering, customers cannot pay, or buy.  Employees cannot work. Supply chains are unpredictable.  And young management teams are being tested to do more than sell and grow. So those of us in investment, consulting and development are developing and rolling out our response.  In doing so I advocate we should bring our hard won expertise and experience to bear.  Our criteria must be speed, effectiveness and long term impact.  We should apply what we know and embrace complexity.

Speed:  As funders we talk fast and deliver slowly,  making promises to beneficiaries that we simply don’t keep.  Our chronic slowness and this is not going to change with COVID.  What might be good however is to get real about our timelines for this emergency.  Lets plan backwards from the disbursement and plan our delivery around the conditions at that point.

Effectiveness and Complexity:  As the period of crisis will stretch beyond 12 months, our funding will be needed even 9 months from now.  Our technical assistance will be different, but still impactful.  Lets think through multiple scenarios and linkages.  What companies will still be around when our funding or TA hits?  What will the market look like?  Will they have to pivot and adapt their business model?  Will specialist distributors surivive or will they need to diversify or consolidate?  If we return to distribution of free equipment [please no …], how can the local companies get into the procurement?  Can we seed the market rather than flood it and kill it?

Long Term Impact If we succeed in mobilising and disbursing more funds, let’s keep our perspective and discipline.  We have been dealing with a realisation that portfolio and cost management has been weak in many PAYGO companies.  We have seen that the price point for equipment is dropping rapidly with the disintermediation of wholesalers and the direct entry of quality approved Chines manufacturers.  We are at the cusp of engaging the private sector to electrify public institutions based on remote monitoring and robust and timely payment structures.  Rather than respond to the clamour, lets keep our focus on much needed restructuring and changes for the better in the market.  Conditional and not free funding

Apply What We Know: I have waited in Mozambique [and still wait] for emergency funding to move from the conference to the real world.  In Uganda I have tried to compete against phantom companies set up to soak up development money without real output.  I have visited rural health clinics and schools in multiple countries where there are not one but multiple systems installed.  Maybe they are not working for lack of maintenance. Maybe there is no equipment to connect.  Often no people to operate them.   Our emergency response cannot and should not ignore what we know on the ground.

What is the impact of shutting down an economy where the majority of the population is in the informal sector rather than the formal; in rural areas rather than in cities?  Maybe rural incomes will not be greatly impacted?  Maybe TB and poor maternal health will remain more lethal than COVID.    What should money actually be spent on?

So  lets be realistic and expert in our response.   Let’s have real impact rather than headlines.  And lets move forward and continue to change for the better