🎯 The business: panel, battery, charge controller and lighting bundles for off-grid shops, farms, schools and clinics in Kenya and Uganda, sold to local distributors, NGOs and solar retailers. The kits are assembled from U.S. and imported components into a tested, branded package; the value you add is reliability and a warranty that is honored.
Solar distributors and installers in Nairobi, Mombasa and Kampala, agricultural cooperatives, and NGOs and faith-based missions that buy in bulk for schools and clinics. A 1 kW shop kit sells for $900 to $1,500 landed; a 5 kW clinic system for $6,000 to $10,000. NGOs pay by purchase order and bank transfer; distributors pay in advance or by letter of credit.
| LLC, licenses, insurance | $1,200 |
| Component sourcing accounts and two demonstration kits | $3,000 to $5,000 |
| Testing, labeling, kit documentation in English and Swahili | $800 |
| Samples shipped, Gold Key or Powering Africa event | $3,000 to $5,000 |
| Working capital for the first pallet order | $10,000 to $20,000 |
| All-in | ≈ $18,000 to $32,000 |
Design three kits around real use cases (a shop that needs lights and a phone-charging business, a farm that needs a water pump, a clinic that needs a vaccine fridge) and test each one for a week. Learn Kenya’s standards body requirements for solar products. Contact the U.S. Commercial Service in Nairobi and the NGOs that fund off-grid projects. Price landed, with duty estimates, because that is the only price a buyer there can compare.
A 1 kW kit that costs $600 in components and assembly sells at $1,100 to the distributor, leaving about $350 after freight and certification per kit. A pallet of twenty kits is $7,000 of margin. NGO orders of 100 systems at a time are where the business becomes real, and those come through tenders and relationships built over months.
Kenya’s KEBS pre-export verification of conformity (PVoC) for solar equipment, Uganda’s UNBS equivalent, lithium battery shipping rules (dangerous goods by air, restrictions by sea), import duty and VAT exemptions that both countries have offered for solar components (verify current status, they change), U.S. export screening of buyers, and your warranty terms, which must be serviceable locally through a partner.
Batteries damaged or delayed in transit. A controller that fails in the heat. A distributor who does not honor the warranty you promised. Currency swings that change the landed price mid-negotiation. The exporters who last partner with one strong local installer, hold spares in-country, and design for the conditions rather than for the catalog.