Lighting Africa Program selected 5 innovative products as the best able to deliver safe, reliable & cost-effective lighting to millions of people in Africa

The winners were judged by a panel of industry experts and announced in Nairobi, Kenya at the Lighting Africa Conference and Trade Fair. Lighting Africa is helping mobilize the private sector to provide modern, off-grid lighting – such as Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) and Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs) – to more than 250 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2030.

Twenty-four entrants were rigorously tested and judged in five categories: room lighting, task lighting, portable torch lighting, best value and top performance. No award was made in the portable torch lighting category. The winning manufacturer’s and products in the other categories are:

• Barefoot Power’s ‘PowaPack’, which won in the room lighting category and also won for top performance
• Greenlight Planet’s ‘Sun King’, which won in the task lighting category and took second in the best value category
• Barefoot Power’s ‘Firefly’, which won in the best value category for products that cost under $40 and came second in the task lighting category
• SunTransfer’s ‘SunTransfer2’, which took second place in the top performance category
• D. Light Design’s ‘Nova S200’, which took second place in the room lighting category

Jean-Philippe Prosper, IFC’s Regional Director for Eastern and Southern Africa, said, “The awards mark the beginning of a process that will help consumers identify quality lighting products more easily. The awards were designed to recognize off-grid lighting systems that achieve high performance, while remaining affordable for low- income earners in Sub Saharan Africa.” 

Lighting Africa, a joint World Bank and IFC developmental initiative, will provide feedback to the five winners and all of the 24 finalists with detailed laboratory test results and user comments to help them refine their products and ready them for the African market. IFC is a member of the World Bank Group. 

Lighting Africa was established to mobilize the global lighting industry to help entrepreneurs develop off-grid, non-fuel based lighting solutions for the millions of Africans who lack access to reliable light, and to reduce barriers that interfere with the private sector’s efforts to penetrate the market.

Lighting Africa’s technical partners are the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy in Freiburg, Germany, the National Lighting Test Center in Beijing, China, and the Schatz Energy Research Center at Humboldt State University in California.