First impression of an incoming EGG fellow

First night in Dar. The sweltering heat barely alleviated by the noisy fan prevents me from falling asleep. There’s nothing I can do but think. I am going to stay here in Tanzania for 7 months. I had heard about EGG-energy a year ago, when I was doing my master in technology and policy at MIT. It then took me a few months to realize that I wanted to come in on this venture, one that encompasses my two fields of interest: energy and development.

For the first time, a doubt pops into my head: these fields are precisely those we want and love to hear good stories about, so much so that we may be sometimes tempted to sidestep some of the facts that would not fit in our idealized frame, regardless of their importance. This may be fair game in the realm of traditional entrepreneurship: after all getting investments is as much a matter of seduction as a matter of well-grounded numbers. Yet, the social dimension of a venture such as EGG entails a different and probably more imperious sort of moral imperatives than those of traditional businesses, given that it affects so strongly the lives of its customers. Investors must also be respected for their guts. What if the story of EGG was too good to be true? This is my last thought before I finally close my eyes.

Spending my first day in Tanzania at the charging and swapping stations of Chanika and Mvuti totally dispels my previous doubts. The show of customers routinely coming to the station to swap their batteries, just as we would go to the bakery or the post office, is a powerful demonstration of the validity of EGG’s power distribution model. Being in a position to assess the context in which the company works makes me realize how far EGG has already come : it is truly impressive. Yet, this is just the beginning : there is still a lot to be done for the model to be perfected and its service to be expanded. In addition to the day-to-day operations, I will contribute to the deployment of an IT system to handle customers and batteries data, the establishment of new partnerships with both local and external actors and investors, and the opening of up to 10 new stations.

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A graduate from Ecole Polytechnique and MIT, Laurent Guérin will be assisting EGG-energy’s management team in Tanzania from February to September. If you are interested in applying for such a fellowship, please let us know at info-at-egg-energy.com.