Addtinionally, our team met with the excellent Willow Impact Investors. This meeting was likewise very motivating. I am very pleased to find investors out there that share our values and this make me very excited about the future. For a social business it is key that we can find partners that can support our value set and strengthen our long term goals to have an environmental and social impact in the communities where we operate. Williow Impact Investors are also about to launch a impact investment fund with a follow up for social impact – groundbreaking stuff!

Finally, we scheduled a meeting with Rockefeller Foundation. We had a great meeting sharing experiences from the field and learning more about the SPEED programme withing their foundation that is looking at using gasfication technology to power telecom base stations in India. At Rockefeller they encouraged us to continue our efforts in East Africa and acknowledged that our model is innovative and has got potential in the Sub-Saharan Africa.

During our stay we got the chance to work at the local creative co-working space Betahaus in Kreutzberg and hanging out here and meeting with other locla entrepreneurs was definately one of the better parts of the trip.  We also visited the Social Impact Lab, a center for social entrepreneurship in Berlin. Social Impact Lab works closely with SAP and the majority of the startup projects they engage in is IT focused.I want to pick up an example, a startup company called Transfair, working to develop a tool that enables outsourcing academic level tasks to people in developing countries. I think it’s a very interesting area to work with and I can confirm the problem of brain drain in East Africa. I have met many Africans who are educated and capable, but never had the chance to work with the equivalent level of education.

During our stay we also had the chance to meet a few interesting social impact investors and specially the new initiative from Deutche Bank for social impact investing is extremely interesting.

New year greetings!

Pamoja Cleantech team

“What began as an innovation project in the Swedish university environment is now a for-profit social enterprise network in Africa and Asia. We are impressed with the high level of innovation, commitment and a novel approach in spreading of an idea which contributes to sustainable growth in developing countries. ”

The jury consisted of Lena Torell-Treschow, IVA, Chairman, Anders Snell, Billerud, Charlotte Brogren, Vinnova, Jonas Wiström, ÅF, Ulf Lindberg Almega, Pontus Schultz, The Week’s Business and Jill Bederoff, The Week’s Business.

The main category award was won by the fastgrowing mobile VoIP provider Rebtel. “In a short time Rebtel have built up a brand known around the world, built on industry-leading innovation in technology and business model. Above all, it was shown that a fast growing user base can translate into profits in the company. ”

Pamoja team  Stockholm also participated in the annual innovation seminar arranged by Veckans Affärer, Sweden’s largest weekly business magazine, The AF Group Sweden’s biggest technical consultancy firm and Vinnova, the Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems, invests in research and strengthens Sweden’s innovative capacity for competitiveness, sustainable development and growth.

Just recently we have been working to leverage best potential from the business study. Co-ordinating a multi-stakeholder process and aligning goals with several partners has taken its time. We are now on good direction and expect to be signing agreements in near future!

Here is a peak into the ordinary Pamoja start up life. Moments of sweat, tears and lots of fun. To spot us live you find us hiding in our office space at the Stockholm University, attending seminars at Aalto Venture Garage or brainstorming ideas at the local sandbox. See you around!

Simultaneously, a team of engineers have been touring East Africa with a mission to find a suitable pilot site for our first on site operations.  This activity on the ground has paid off in new interesting partnerships and increased knowledge of course.  We will disclose some amazing news in the near future, please stay tuned.

Since the early days of planning the trip to East-Africa we were sure that we wanted to go hiking. The first option was Kilimanjaro, but since it seemed to be a lot more expensive, due to the distance from Nairobi and more hiking days. So we ended up choosing the second highest mountain in Africa, Mt. Kenya for our destination. The route we took was Sirimon- Point Lenana- Naro Moru.

The hike took us 3,5 days. On the first day we gained about 900m of altitude. I had some symptoms from the altitude on the second day, but luckily in the end my body got used to the 4200m. altitude. Day 3 was the best and the hardest, in total 14 hours. We started the day at 3 am. In order to experience sunrise at the summit, point Lenana 4985m.

I felt really lucky having the possibility to experience Mt. Kenya and the national park. What made the hike even more interesting were the different vegetation zones in different altitudes and opposite sides of the mountain. But nothing was as breathtaking as the last 20 minutes of climbing and reaching to the summit while the sun was rising. And finally, you reach the top! Breathtaking!

After the euphoric feeling vanished, I realized that how privileged we really are. Mount Kenya and the surrounding national park are the wonders and richness of Kenya, but who are the people that can afford to experience that? Entering the national park was 50€ per hay for foregners and 27€ for residents. During the whole trip, we saw one Kenyan group and all the others (excluding the guides etc.) were foreigners.

-Irena

Pamoja Team

Since last update the team has been busy at many levels. There are 17 people involved in the project and we are gaining momentum. We have  a team focusing on design and product development. This work is quite fascinating and attracts a lot of interest, in a few months time we will have what we call the Green Plant ready and running – our hybrid renewable energy micro powerplant.

Me and Felix has also been active negotiating and promoting our idea at the Social Entrepreneurship Forum and the Swedish East African Chamber of Commerce.The evening at the SE Forum was a cool experience and we got a lot of interest for the project. It was great that Vattenfall Ab – a Swedish energy company  was represented in the audience. We also got to talk to people for Schneider Electronics and The Africa Groups, which is a solidarity organization independent of any political party or religious body actively working with African interests and policy in Sweden. We have also met with some of the companies that we are negotiating with, no names mentioned yet but we are looking at pretty nice partnerships and potential collaborations in both the telecom and the energy industry.

This week I also visited the Swedish East African Chamber of Commerce which hosted an event on business opportunities between Sweden and the region. It was a pleasure meeting with like-minded people and hearing about successful Swedish ventures in the market was also nice.

Peik Stenlund

new pamoja website

Thanks to www.kmh-design.de.

//Felix