Over 600 million people in Africa do not have access to modern energy, which impacts a household’s health, education, quality of life, and financial wellbeing. Thanks to hardware and financing innovations—all-in-one solar home systems that don’t need a grid connection paired with flexible, pay-as-you-go credit plans—there is a promising potential path to energy access and financial inclusion for those otherwise left behind. However, despite initial growth, off-grid solar needs to scale even more rapidly to meet the needs of their customers and help achieve the SDG7 target of universal energy access by 2030.
To achieve this will require data innovation, using the power of advanced analytics to better target customers and assess credit risk for households that are largely unbanked. Nithio is leading that charge, as an analytics and finance platform that utilizes applied machine learning to create alternative credit scoring and other data science-powered insights, including: where to find ideal off-grid customers using geospatial modeling; how to market products households need and want, using segmentation and prediction; and what their expected payment streams will be using time-series forecasting. Nithio’s B2B analytics products help both solar companies and their investors manage risk to expand and adapt in a growing, challenging market. We believe that implementing context-specific data science models, alongside financial and operational innovation, is key to building ecosystems for critical social goods such as sustainable energy access for all.