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The first ever locally manufactured solar kiosk has opened at James town a low income community in Accra.

The kiosk which is fully powered by solar energy is best placed at places without electricity especially in the rural and peri-urban areas of the country.

Currently, Solar kiosk Ghana, operates about 10 kiosk in different location, all of which components were imported from abroad, Germany and assembled in Ghana.

JCS Investments Limited, a Ghanaian social investment company, facilitated the start-up in Ghana and is responsible for running Solar kiosk.

JCS investment Limited, in collaboration with Sola Kiosk, has introduced a range of solar products in Ghana to help the deprived have access to affordable energy.

The products, which are solar cookers, bulbs, fridges, deep freezers and fans, would enable rural and deprived communities have an alternative source of power, and save the national electricity grid from excessive pressure.

Brekusu is the first of five communities in Ghana that are benefiting from the pilot project of Solar Kiosk,

Patricia Safo, MD of JCS Investments and Solar kiosk said her company views renewable energy as being very important to providing alternative power to Ghanaians and empowering rural communities.

“We are very proud that within a period of six months we have been able to provide Solar kiosk in five different communities in Ghana and that is not an easy task. We hope we can continue to provide more to a lot more communities in the coming years,” she said.

She said though solar products are quiet expensive, it saves money in the long term, and that was the reason why the company was targeting deprived areas. To her, since Africa has abundant sunshine, solar energy is the future of the country.

Andreas Spiess, Chief Executive Officer of Sola Kiosk, based in Berlin, Germany, said the company is present in six Africa countries apart from Ghana. Though Sola Kiosk is a German company, Mr, Spiess said, Africa, currently, is the most promising continent, and he wants to be part of its development process.

According to him, even though Germany has less sunshine as compared to Ghana, 10% of their power supply was from solar: “Africa has lot of sunshine. It is the sunniest place on earth, and yet most needed of energy.” 

He added that Sola Kiosk was in the country to contribute its quota towards improving energy in Ghana and the Africa Continent as a whole.