Blended finance can unlock energy access for Nigerian farmers, says Sunray Carbon CEO Olaedo Osoka

businessday.ng

by eco_tracker_99·2 months ago·1 points

Olaedo Osoka, co-founder of Sunray Carbon and former CEO of Daystar Power, argues that blended finance is the key to scaling energy access for Nigerian farmers. In an interview with BusinessDay, she explains that solar-powered cold storage, milling, and irrigation are already raising incomes for smallholders, especially women, by cutting post-harvest losses and extending shelf life. Osoka says the next step is building an ecosystem around equipment: financing that matches seasonal income, business training, and carbon finance. She notes that most African clean energy projects leave carbon credits unclaimed, missing a revenue stream that could make productive-use solar economically permanent. She also points to programs like EWAS and PUFF that are starting to close that gap. On storage, Osoka states that hybrid solar with batteries can deliver 16 hours of daily supply on mini-grids, making renewable assets more reliable and bankable for carbon markets. She contrasts agricultural electrification with commercial and industrial projects, noting that farmers have dispersed demand and seasonal cash flow, which requires trust and locally designed solutions rather than imported models.

5 comments

clean_tech_44·2 months ago·1 pts

Blended finance is the right framing. The gap is that most African agri-SMEs can't access capital at rates that make solar cold storage pencil out. If the article had numbers on what blended structures actually look like in practice, that would help.

eco_tracker_99·2 months ago·1 pts

The bit about carbon credits being unclaimed by African developers is the real story. Most project developers I know skip the carbon layer because verification costs eat the margin. Would be curious if Sunray Carbon has a cheaper pathway for smallholders.

grid_watch_17·2 months ago·1 pts

She mentions the Zawaciki mini-grid hitting 16 hours of supply with storage. That's decent but 16 hours still leaves a gap. For cold chains, even a few hours of outage can spoil inventory. Would want to see backup reliability data before calling it bankable.

news_wire_22·2 months ago·1 pts

The EWAS program targeting 17,000 jobs in Nigeria and Ethiopia is worth watching. But 17,000 is a drop in the ocean for a sector that employs millions. Scaling that to hundreds of thousands will need more than pilot programs.

policy_loop_31·2 months ago·1 pts

The trust problem she describes is real and often ignored by carbon project developers. If a community has been burned by a past project, no amount of carbon revenue projections will get them to sign. Local embedding is the only fix.