From October to December 2021, Green People’s Energy Ethiopia is providing a range of business development services (BDS) to ambitious and promising renewable energy enterprises, who intend to scale-up their activities. With the help of a team of experienced BDS-experts, six solar enterprises and one micro-hydro-power company aim at further enhancing their business development strategy and shaping up their investment plans and financing proposals. Aim of this support is to enable these companies to tab investment capital or other financing sources with the help of an economically sound, innovative scaling-up concept.
Following a through, individual demand assessment for each company, a two-days expert training covering various business development aspects has been conducted for all companies in the capital Addis Ababa. Next to participating in the actual training, the companies also used the opportunity for exchanging experiences and networking on the sidelines of the event.
Currently, the companies receive individual coaching on their specific business cases and financing proposals, so that they get enabled to access financing from different directions.
In the meantime, GBE Ethiopia finances the support of two additional companies via the EU-funded GET.invest initiative, which is implemented by GIZ, and provides advisory and match-making support through its Finance Catalyst programme.
Testimonials:
Our company is one of the enterprises selected by GIZ for BDS support. We attended a two-days training session, which provided us an excellent platform to engage with the remaining six companies, discussed our issues and exchanged ideas on how to increase our collective role in developing the capacity towards sustainable development in Ethiopia’s solar industry.
– Participant and managing director of a solar products manufacturing plant
The assistance we are receiving from GIZ is really beneficial; during the workshop, we are able to meet and engage with the experienced attendees. We are looking forward to the coaching so that we may fill technical gaps and become more competent in the sector; nevertheless, the time frame for the support should better be three months at least in order to achieve additional impacts.
– Participant and co-founder of a solar products distribution and installation company
Thanks for a very well-organized training & discussion and the overall hospitality for my stay at Addis during the training, and I appreciate GIZ and the BDS-consultants for their work. The training modules are very well prepared and understandable for everyone especially a person like me. My background is Engineering and a bit far from business development concepts. In this sense, I was running my business more in a traditional way. So, right now I’m very keen to more understand how to develop my own business model, prepare sound business plan, well organized proposal and a way how to access financing sources.
– Participant and founder of a hydropower consulting company
