PEG Africa is a company that gives loans for useful and life-changing things like solar energy systems for the home.
Through their services, people can use solar energy to make their electricity, so they don’t have to buy harmful fuels.
It was started in 1959 as a consulting firm for the cement industry. Since then, it has grown and now works on more than 700 projects in more than 95 countries.
PEG also gives advice and helps with things like cement engineering and building. It gives advice on cement plants, does geological engineering, builds cement batching plants, buys supplies, does feasibility studies, and manages projects, and designs.
Additionally, the company takes care of everything, from coming up with ideas and making engineering designs to buying equipment, putting together and starting up a project, helping with operations, getting money, and running the plant.
The companies that makeup PEG’s network of subsidiaries and affiliates are:
- PEG Tunisia
- PEG for Aviation
- PEG Resources
By working with these affiliates, PEG is not only able to meet the highest levels of professionalism and dedication, but also to exceed them.
PEG is the best cement engineering consulting firm because it is committed to being independent, has experience all over the world, is technically competent, and focuses on business.
How it Works
PEG Africa has strategic partnerships with other market leaders and is always improving its technology so that it can serve customers in many different places.
Thanks to their new “pay-as-you-go” financing model, customers who could never afford things like solar home systems may now be able to get them.
By replacing expensive, low-quality, and polluting fuels like kerosene, PEG products not only help people’s health, fight climate change, and save them money, but they also give them a way to own assets and be part of the financial system.
PEG also uses a mix of technology, local partners, and local service centers to make sure that their customers get their goods quickly and at a good price.
On top of that, they have a contact center that is open seven days a week and hundreds of community-based service centers in each country so that they can be close to their clients and help them quickly and effectively.
Their main goal is to make it easier for off-grid families to get productive assets.
All of the client’s regular mobile money payments go right toward paying off the loan, and when the loan is paid off, the client owns the asset outright.
Their clients could save up to $1,000 over the life of their solar home system because they won’t have to buy kerosene, candles, or batteries.
That’s a lot of money for a family that makes between $3 and $10 a day.
By doing this, they can use the money a family would have spent on low-quality fuels that cause pollution to buy real estate instead.
Market Size
Many of the poorest people in the world come to PEG Africa for help.
They’re proud of the fact that 82% of their clients are first-time loan borrowers who got their first loan from PEG finance. One in two of their clients has less than $3 a day to spend.
Only about a third of people in West Africa have bank accounts because so many of their clients can’t even imagine using one.
By giving credit for purchases, they may be able to help their clients build credit profiles that they can use to get loans and services in the future.
This will bring them even closer to the mainstream financial system, which has ignored them until now.
Founders
Hugh Whalan
Hugh Whalan is the CEO of PEG Africa who started three different businesses in West Africa, including the first energy crowdfunding platform and the first off-grid solar company to go public on the continent.
He is not only an Aspen Global Leadership Fellow, World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, but also one of Forbes’ 30 under 30.
Hugh has a lot of experience in credit, embedded finance, linked assets, clean technology, and crowdfunding from his time as an entrepreneur, investor, and CEO.
He has raised over $65 million (USD) from strategic, private equity, venture capital, Mezz, and senior debt from institutional investors, and he has put together teams of over 1,500 employees from around the world and from different cultures.
He also has experience starting businesses in the United States, Mexico, and Africa.
Nate Heller
Nate Heller is the current Chief Operating Officer (COO) who set up and grew PEG Africa
He has worked as a consultant for the UN and as a volunteer for the Peace Corps.
He has also worked in international social entrepreneurship and development for almost 20 years.
For 12 of those years, he created new ways for customers with low incomes in West Africa to get their products and pay for them.
He has an MBA from Yale and an MA from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins.
Aside from that, he knows a lot about solar energy, mobile money, distribution and financing for the bottom of the pyramid (BOP), social entrepreneurship, and West Africa.
He knows a lot about social entrepreneurship and finding new ways to get products to people who don’t have much money.
Additionally, he can talk in Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, and he knows English, French, and Wolof very well.
Investors & Funding Rounds
PEG Africa has gotten a total of $12.5 million from three different investment rounds.
The most recent investment came from a round of debt financing.
Their investors include; CDC Group, SunFunder, responsibility, Blue Haven Initiative, Renewable Energy Performance Platform (REPP), Total, Investisseurs & Partenaires (I&P), and Acumen.
The Electrification Financing Initiative and Energy Access Ventures are the most recent groups to help.
Main Competitors
Radian Group: It protects lenders from losses caused by homeowners who don’t pay their bills and helps the American dream of owning a home at the same time.
Ygrene Energy Fund: It offers Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) funding to property owners in their area so that they can make their homes or businesses more energy efficient.
Gintech Energy Corporation: It makes solar cells and sells them to people.
Related:
Revix: Story, Founders, Investors & Funding Rounds
