It is of paramount importance that the key service providers form an integral part of the CONNEXION AFRICA workflow and in this regard CONNEXION AFRICA will work closely with local companies throughout the entire project entering into Joint Ventures or other similar commercial relationships. There will be a default transfer of skills which will form part of project and CONNEXION AFRICA will need to remain involved over many years. Depending on the complexity of the project, the handover phase could take up to 5 years, for example in the case of a Waste to Energy plant. For Carbon Credit associated projects, there will need to be a continuous monitoring from year to year.
CONNEXION AFRICA will be responsible for providing the entire technical expertise and will be charged for implementing and then transferring this knowledge to the host according to a define schedule and timetable. The nature of the project are complex and to this extent, CONNEXION AFRICA's team will need to work very closely with Government during the project's feasibility stage. To this extent, CONNEXION AFRICA's network in Government is an essential and core aspect of this venture. CONNEXION AFRICA currently has excellent contacts in Government in Malawi, DRC, Congo (Brazzaville), The Ivory Coast and Angola; equally CONNEXION AFRICA has excellent business relations with commercial operators in each of these countries. As with most African Governments, when a successful project is launched in one country, the news spreads via the various Ministries, and so CONNEXION AFRICA's network will expand and grow over time as has already happened in the Ivory Coast. CONNEXION AFRICA initial focus will be initiating projects in Malawi, The Ivory Coast, DRC and Congo.
Value Added Component
Apart from the obvious benefits associated with CONNEXION AFRICA's contributions outlined above, there is a larger impact with huge benefits embedded in each project. The combined skill set of each of the key-players is vast and hitherto there is no one company on the African continent that offers the range of services proposed. One of the main obstacles facing any African development project is the ROI component – foreign investors and institutions take comfort in projects that not only address energy and environmental issues, but are also viable, sustainable and profitable.
The immediate advantage of CONNEXION AFRICA's projects are underpinned by the interrelated aspects of the project. By way of example, let us take a housing project in Malawi, built close to a large city such as Lilongwe or Blantyre: currently trees are being felled to fire up the brick kilns causing deforestation, emission of poisonous gasses, soil erosion leading to the global warning and the like. The Carbon-credit generated by eliminating the aforementioned has a non-negligible monetary value, not to mention the “green”/environmental positive impact the solution delivers. The Opes housing construction methodology too has a carbon credit value in so far that the thermal properties of the panel technology results in the houses being 40% more energy efficient. CONNEXION AFRICA's solution too would incorporate solar panels and photovoltaics technology thereby reducing the energy demands a home would have on the national grid – this too would have a small carbon-credit impact.
Feeding off this project, we have previous talked about turning Malawi into an export nation. The economic advantages of this project would have an immediate impact on the economy by stimulating trade and earning valuable foreign currency. The need for a Waste to Energy Plant becomes a natural add-on and this gives rise a multi-faceted project that generates quantifiable returns. The Waste to Energy plant, apart from producing resalable gases and biofuels (energy), provide energy to power a water purification plant which could be used to supply water to a large scale community agricultural farming project, leading to subsistence farming for the community. By-products from the plant could provide input into a fertilizer plant, or materials that would be used for road fills. All these spinoffs automatically would stimulate the economy, gradually transforming Malawi to become sustainable thereby impacting its trade deficit and reducing its foreign currency needs.