THE CARBON WAR

146
The Winning of The Carbon War
deniers and flat-earthers. What must many of them be thinking? I know the
Saudi Arabian climate envoy is in the room, for example. I am meeting him later.
Today’s Al now takes the stage: the man who has become a global legend
in his post-Vice-President years. A member of the Abu Dhabi royal family
presents him with his award.
The world is going to say yes to the renewable future, he says in his
acceptance speech. The only thing that is missing is political will. And that
too is a renewable resource.
In Abu Dhabi today, I find it easy to believe him, and to believe in our hosts.
I sit nervously near the front of the vast audience. A million-and-a-half
dollar prize would save SolarAid and SunnyMoney a lot of heartache this year.
The truth is that our breakneck sales growth in 2013 has evened off in 2014.
We budgeted for growth, we bought solar lights in volumes expecting growth.
Too many of them sit now in a Dar es Salaam warehouse. As a consequence,
our cash is dangerously low.
The situation is worse than this. We have not had a CEO in the field for
SunnyMoney since May last year, when start-up specialist Steve Andrews
returned to the UK after a four year tour of duty. This is probably my fault. I had
thought it would be easy to replace him with a world-class growth-phase retail
specialist, simply using my network. That has proved wrong, indeed – I now
think – complacent. The first tranche of candidates did not work. I delayed
too long using head-hunters. A team of three has been holding the fort leading
SunnyMoney in Nairobi, led by John Keane, solar-lighting and development
specialist, a veteran of SolarAid from the outset. They have done their level best,
but with proper solar lighting markets now in place in Kenya and Tanzania,
facing strong competition from well-resourced new entrants following where
SolarAid and SunnyMoney led, their task has been difficult in the extreme. We
all know we need a retail expert with strong African experience.
I could do with a major lucky break to cover my shortcomings today.
The suspense is an interesting experience. The organisers have kept tight
confidentiality. None of the five short-listed finalists for the non-profit organisation
category of the Zayed Prize know who has won. We sit together and watch
short films about each others’ achievements on the huge screen. The massive
audience claps at the end of each. The SolarAid film features an interview
with a member of the Kenyan SunnyMoney marketing team, Olivia Otieno.
She radiates a controlled passion for the mission, with perfect fluency. How
I would love SolarAid to win this prize, for people like her.