VenturesNow

Tanzanian company sees opportunity in waste management

Published

6 years ago

August 21, 2018

Tanzania-based Phenix Recycling is a bespoke waste management and recycling service for businesses in eastern and southern Africa. Athina Kyriakopoulou, founder and CEO, spoke with Justin Probyn, author of this report.

1. Give us your elevator pitch.

Businesses across the East Africa region are struggling with the issue of how to responsibly manage their waste. At the same time, local innovative startups using waste as a resource are lacking reliable and predictable access to their waste. Phenix Recycling is connecting the two, creating an “uninterrupted power supply” for waste and enabling a circular economy across geographies, industries and sectors.

2. How did you finance your startup?

To date, Phenix has been funded solely by founder capital of around US$50,000. This gave us a two-year runway in which we piloted three versions of our business model, and successfully serviced clients across two countries and two industries.

3. If you were given US$1m to invest in your company now, where would it go?

That investment would be spent on purchasing new equipment and setting up long-term hubs in two of our main locations. This includes machinery and items that would allow us to work more efficiently and reduce the upstream cost of our services by making our processed material more valuable downstream.

4. What risks does your business face?

Phenix is one of the first of its kind therefore at the forefront of a new formal industry. This means that we are competing with informal sectors while trying to build the awareness around the need for our services. Navigating the regulatory environment is also a challenge as we have an innovative businesses model that is not fully regulated yet.

5. So far, what has proven to be the most successful form of marketing?

By far the best form of marketing is word of mouth through business networks. As a new company and trying to build a new industry, happy and satisfied business customers are the key to acquiring new customers. Particularly in established industries like tourism, where businesses tend to follow the pack. Once you have your foot in the door by satisfying a few key leaders in their field, the rest will follow and it won’t be long until its “industry standard”.

6. Describe your most exciting entrepreneurial moment.

When I received my first revenue. Running a B2B business is drastically different from B2C, in that clients take a lot longer to acquire, sometimes over eight months; particularly your first clients. So when I had my first paying client, it was a huge success and milestone.

7. Tell us about your biggest mistake, and what have you’ve learnt from it?

I think my biggest mistake was making operational investments into teams and facilities before having the customers signed and sealed. No matter how promising a customer is, they aren’t a customer until pen touches paper. Also, during the validation phase, a customer who signs up with a huge discount, does not validate willingness nor the ability to pay for the service. You need customers who pay full price to prove your model.

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VenturesNow

World Bank grants Malawi $57.6 million for food crisis

Published

14 mins ago

April 27, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

As a response to its food crisis, the World Bank said on Friday that it would give Malawi $57.6 million in “quick release” grants.

“This support comes in the context of the severe food crisis the country is suffering due to El Niño conditions in the wider southern Africa region,” the World Bank said in a statement.

“A series of intense disaster events over the last few years has left almost no time for the country to recover and has resulted in a severe erosion of food security at the national level.”

Malawi is one of the least developed countries in the world. It is ranked 170 out of 187 countries in the 2010 Human Development Index. Almost 16 million people live there, and 90% of them make less than $2 a day. That’s 53% of the total population.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says that 46,000 children in Malawi are seriously malnourished. In 2023, UNICEF said that more than 500,000 Malawian children were at risk of not getting enough food.

Now, Malawi has a lot of programs in place to deal with things like poverty, and climate change, and to make the business and agriculture more diverse.

VenturesNow

Nigerian oil regulator implements regional fuel standards

Published

1 day ago

April 26, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

Nigeria’s oil authority has clarified that the recent changes to diesel fuel sulphur content standards are part of a regional effort to make things more uniform and are not meant to loosen rules for local refineries.

A report from S&P Global last week said that the West African fuel market had changed a lot after Nigeria raised the maximum diesel sulphur content from 200 parts per million (ppm) to around 650 ppm. This caused worries that the country might be lowering its standards to allow diesel made in Nigeria that is higher than the 200 ppm limit.

The Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), on the other hand, said it was only following a 2020 decision by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) that all of the regions had to slowly switch to better fuels.

Fuels that have a lot of sulfur can hurt engines and make the air dirty. As of right now, the ECOWAS rule lets locally-made fuel have more sulfur until January 2025. After that, a standard of less than 5 parts per million will be used for all oil, whether it is refined in West Africa or brought in from another country.

Farouk Ahmed, the head of the NMDPRA, told Reuters that the new limits are in line with ECOWAS’s choice to require stricter fuel specifications. The new rules will go into effect in January 2021 for non-ECOWAS imports and January 2025 for ECOWAS refineries.

“We are merely implementing the ECOWAS decision adopted in 2020,” Ahmed said.

“So a local refinery with a 650 ppm sulphur in its product is permissible and safe under the ECOWAS rule until January next year where a uniform standard would apply to both the locally refined and imported products outside West Africa”, Ahmed said.

Ahmed said that importers were told that the amount of sulphur allowed was going down, from 300 parts per million in February to 200 parts per million this month. This was done long before the huge Dangote refinery started providing diesel.

Diesel with a sulphur level of between 1,500 ppm and 3,000 ppm could be brought in by importers before.

The switch to cleaner fuels is in line with efforts to protect the environment around the world and makes sure that all area refiners have the same chances.

Nigeria recently had its worst blackout in decades because of a problem with its energy supply. The high cost of alternative energy sources has been a huge problem for both businesses and individuals, with the price of diesel being the most affordable choice for businesses.