CASE STUDY 2
Exploring Innovation in Action: Power to the People – Lifeline
Energy
Trevor Baylis was quite a swimmer in his youth, representing Britain at
the age of 15. So it wasn’t entirely surprising that he ended up working
for a swimming pool firm in Surrey before setting up his own company.
He continued his swimming passion – working as a part-time TV
stuntman doing underwater feats – but also followed an interest in
inventing things. One of the projects he began work on in 1991 was to
have widespread impact despite – or rather because of – being a ‘lowtech’ solution to a massive problem.
Having seen a documentary about AIDS in Africa he began to see the
underlying need for something which could help communication. Much
of the AIDS problem lies in the lack of awareness and knowledge
across often isolated rural communities – people don’t know about
causes or prevention of this devastating disease. And this reflects a
deeper problem – of communication. Experts estimate that less
than20% of the world’s population have access to a telephone, while
even fewer have a regular supply of electricity, much less television or
Internet access. Very low literacy levels exclude most people from
reading newspapers and other print media.
Radio is an obvious solution to the problem – but how can radio work
when the receivers need power and in many places mains electricity is
simply non-existent. An alternative is battery power – but batteries are
equally problematic – even if they were of good quality and freely
available via village stores people couldn’t afford to buy them regularly.
In countries where $1 a day is the standard wage, batteries can cost
from a day’s to a week’s salary. The HIV/AIDS pandemic also means
that household incomes are under increased pressure as earners
become too ill to work while greater expenditure goes towards
healthcare, leaving nothing for batteries.
What was needed was a radio which ran on some different source of
electricity. In thinking about the problem Baylis remembered the oldfashioned telephones of pre-war days which had wind-up handles to
generate power. He began experimenting, linking together odd items
such as a hand brace, an electric motor and a small radio. He found
that the brace turning the motor would act as a generator that would
supply sufficient electricity to power the radio. By adding a clockwork
mechanism he found that a spring could be wound up – and as it
unwound the radio would play. This first working prototype ran for 14
minutes on a two minute wind. Trevor had invented a clockwork (windup) radio! As a potential solution to the communication problem the
idea had real merit. The trouble was that, like thousands of
entrepreneurs before him, Trevor couldn’t convince others of this. He
spent nearly four years approaching major radio manufacturers like
Philips and Marconi but to no avail. But luck often plays a significant
part in the innovation story – and this was no exception. The idea came
to the attention of some TV researchers and the product was featured
in 1994 on the BBC TV programme Tomorrow’s World, which
showcased interesting and exciting new inventions.
Amongst those who saw it and whose interest was taken by the windup radio were a corporate finance expert, Christopher Staines, and a
South African entrepreneur, Rory Stear. They bought the rights from
Baylis and received a UK government grant to help develop the
product further, including the addition of solar panel options. In South
Africa, the details of the invention were featured in a new broadcast
and heard by Hylton Appelbaum, head of an organisation called the
Liberty Life Foundation, who saw the potential. Even in relatively rich
South Africa, half the homes have no electricity, and elsewhere in
Africa the problem is even more severe.
Liberty Life is a body set up by a major South African insurance
company and Anita and Gordon Roddick, the socially conscious owners
of the Body Shop. Part of the work of the Foundation is in providing
access to employment for the disabled and a third of the company’s
factory workers are blind, deaf, in wheelchairs, or mentally ill. Through
Applebaum, Liberty Life provided the $1.5 million in venture capital
that founded the company. Baygen Power Industries (from Baylis
Generator) was set up by Staines and Stear in 1995, in Cape Town.
Sixty per cent of the shares were held by a group of organisations for
the disabled, a condition of Liberty’s support. Technical development
was provided by the Bristol University Electronics Engineering
Department. Shortly thereafter production of the radio began in Cape
Town by BayGen Products PTY South Africa.
It came on the market at the beginning of 1996 and one year later
around 160,000 units had been sold. Much of the early production was
purchased by aid charities working in Rwanda and other African
countries where relief efforts were underway.
This was not a glamorous product – as a New York Times article
described it, ‘It is no threat to a Sony Walkman. It weighs six pounds,
it’s built like an overstuffed lunch box, and it has a tinny speaker. But
its wholesale price is only $40 and it gets AM, FM, and shortwave,
meaning it can pick up the British Broadcasting Corporation or the
Voice of America, so a circle of mud huts can zip back into the
Information Age with a twist of the wrist.’
(Source(s): Donald G. McNeil Jr., New York Times News Service, 1996)
The impact was significant. In 1996 another BBC TV
programme, QED,featured the radio and at one point showed footage
of Baylis, Staines and Stear together with Nelson Mandela who
commented that this was a ‘fantastic product that can provide an
opportunity for those people who have been despised by society’.
Although appearing basic and low-tech there is a surprising amount of
invention in the product. Baylis filed no less than 13 patents covering
the mainspring and gears that drive a little dynamo. The spring
mechanism is not a simple clockwork type but is more closely related
to the kind used in rewinding auto seat belts. A double-spool
mechanism keeps its tension constant, which is crucial, and the
gearing is sophisticated.
Baygen continued to develop products around the energy needs of
developing countries including wind-up torches and small generators.
The company renamed itself in 1999 as the Freeplay Energy Group and
have taken the original concepts into a wide range of new product
areas.
Although founded on strong social entrepreneurship principles the
business has grown through expanding markets in both developing and
advanced economies. At an early stage in their life they realised that
dependence on government, international and charitable aid providers
posed problems in terms of business sustainability and in 1997,
following investment by the US General Electric Company, they began
diversifying into commercial markets, modifying the product designs to
suit this shift. One of the casualties in this shift has been the Cape
Town factory – after five years manufacturing was outsourced to plants
in China where labour costs are lower.
The company became commercially successful, and sold over 3 million
units of their basic radio models, raising an additional $45m in capital
on the way. Product development began to embrace a wider range of
power options including solar cells, and an increasing range of
applications including torches and lighting, small-scale generators and
mobile phone chargers. Emphasis remains on replacing battery and
fixed-line power applications with rechargeable or self-generating
approaches – an approach which, given increasing concerns about
sustainability in the advanced industrial economies, is opening new
possibilities for market growth.
Typical of their current products is the Lifeline radio, a multi-band, selfpowered radio ‘designed specifically for providing dependable access
to information across a broad range of humanitarian projects. The radio
does not require batteries or mains electricity and can be used
practically anywhere. Engineered to operate in the harshest of rural
conditions, it is rugged, robust and easy to operate. It offers excellent
FM/AM/SW reception and runs on wind-up energy and solar power. Fully
charged, it can play for up to 24 hours. The Lifeline radio was field
tested in various developing countries as part of an extensive research
and development programme to identify and create a radio that truly
meets the requirements of these unique and diverse applications.’
Since its launch in 2003 over 8 million people have received Lifeline
radios and the product has had a marked impact on the lives of many
others – neighbours, friends and families, etc.
Using the Products
The scope for application is wide since it meets the basic human need
for communication and enables a wide range of information, education
and community-building activities. Some examples from the radio side
of the business include:
• A project (funded by various development agencies) using
communication satellites and FM radio technology to communicate
weather, agricultural and health information to nomadic
communities and villages across Africa. The pilot is built on a model
in the village of Bankilare, outside Niger’s capital, Niamey, and
combines a WorldSpace satellite receiver, a laptop, Freeplay radios,
a transmitter, solar panels and other equipment. Information is
downloaded from the Internet via a satellite connection. It is then
rebroadcast via a community FM radio station powered by solar
energy. Villagers, nomads and farmers living in remote and poorly
served areas receive broadcasts on Freeplay radios. The aim of this
project is to provide timely information on the weather, with
implications for crop planting and livestock care, availability of
water, market prices for crops, associated diseases, health and
disaster mitigation. This is just as important for the nomad as for the
farmer. As stated by a nomad: ‘I do not depend on the rain that falls
on my head, but on streams running from the hills when they flood.
So just tell me when it will rain in that distant land and I will know
what to do’.
• In Madagascar the Ministries of Communication and Health,
working with various aid agencies, developed a radio drama series
for women’s listening clubs. Wind-up radios, funded by Rotary, were
distributed to clubs who provided regular feedback on the
programmes. The series is aimed at improving health education,
family planning and AIDS prevention. Similarly in Ethiopia people
living in remote communities in Ethiopia’s Harar Province are tuning
in twice weekly to a radio serial drama aimed at creating awareness
and prevention of HIV/AIDS – a project funded by the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention.
• According to the Zambian Ministry of Education (MOE) 800,000
Zambian children are unable to attend school. They either cannot
afford it, are orphans, live too far to walk to school or are girls who
are kept at home. The attrition rate of teachers poses another
problem – two teachers are dying of AIDS for every one who is
trained. The MOE, together with the Educational Broadcasting
Services, is using Interactive Radio Instruction to help fill the
educational void. Each morning thousands of primary school
learners listen to the lively English and maths programmeLearning
at Taonga Market on the radio. To assist with the lesson, adult
mentors from the community are trained to use radio as a teaching
aid. The Peace Corps in Zambia purchased Freeplay radios for their
volunteers to distribute. These volunteers are trained in the
mentoring process and then train community mentors, enabling the
programme to reach deep rural areas. In addition, Rotary UK is
helping to raise funds to bring more radios to community schools.
• In early 2000, hundreds of thousands of Mozambicans were
displaced by catastrophic flooding. One of the items that people lost
were radios – often the only access to information. Various donor
agencies including the Freeplay Foundation distributed over 7000
radios and a daily programme called Ndhambi was created in the
local language, Shangani. Ndhambi covered information on health,
sanitation, hygiene, the location of landmines, obtaining lost ID
documents and title deeds, governance, tracing and contacting lost
family members, as well as agricultural assistance, all of which were
of great importance during the post-flood period.
• During the crisis in Kosovo in 1999, DFID and the ICRC
purchased over 40,000 Freeplay radios to distribute to refugees on
the move and in camps in Albania and Montenegro. Here the radio
played a part in helping to find missing relatives and to inform of the
location of landmines, contaminated water supplies and boobytrapped villages.
Broadening the Base – The Freeplay Foundation
In 1998 the Freeplay Foundation was established as an extension of the
group’s commitment to empowerment and development. The
Foundation operates as an independent organisation with its own
Board of Trustees but it still receives an annual grant from the Freeplay
Energy Group with which it shares some managerial and administration
resources. The balance of funding is raised from various donors and
used to support a wide range of development and implementation
projects. Working primarily in Africa, the Freeplay Foundation promotes
access to radio broadcasting in rural and remote areas through
alternative energy solutions. It seeks ‘to advance economic progress,
promote community development and help eradicate disease, famine
and conflict’. It does this by continuing the original wind-up radio
mission – supporting or initiating projects that harness appropriate and
alternative energy solutions that deliver information and education
through radio broadcasting.
The Foundation facilitates access to specialists who can provide the
four components vital to the sustainable success of any radio
communication initiative:
• Software – quality radio programming directed at a targeted
audience;
• Hardware – radios that allow sustainable listening access to all
groups;
• Structured distribution – a planned and coordinated
distribution of radios, in consultation with communities;
• Project monitoring and evaluation – measuring
effectiveness against set objectives.
The Future – Lifeline Energy
Building on their extensive experience and recognising the potential
was much wider than the core radio and related products associated
with the original business the company changed its name in 2010 to
Lifeline Energy. Their vision is ‘to develop a range of practical, fit-forpurpose products using innovative and appropriate technologies and
distribution approaches that the poor can apply to their daily lives.’ As
they point out, fewer than 5% of the 500 million people living in rural
sub-Saharan Africa have access to any form of electricity, so this is an
urgent imperative.
A key new product development in this direction has been the Lifelight
– an innovation developed in response to an urgent need. Poor families
rarely have access to electric lighting and many – especially children
and women – suffer because they use firewood, kerosene and candles.
This raises major issues around health, fire risk and wider
environmental consequences; as the company puts it, ‘it is tragic that
in2010, well over 100 years after the invention of the light bulb,
millions of people in the developing world are still in the dark at night’.
The concept underpinning the Lifelight is the use of bright, highly fuel
efficient LEDs, which can last for thousands of hours and are relatively
non-toxic compared to fluorescent lighting. At the same time there is
scope for bringing in the same wind-up and solar technology in which
the company has extensive experience.
Significantly they recognise the need for a sustainable business model
and their vision now incorporates many of the lessons they have
learned about scaling and spread. They are trying to work with a
virtuous cycle – ‘researching and assessing what the extremely poor
want and need; creating fit-for-purpose products that people can
afford; and then ensuring their distribution through various channels
including the ability for women to earn income and create jobs by
selling or renting lights and providing charging services to those
without electricity’.
An important dimension of this is opening up the possibility of reverse
transfer of technology – from the lessons learned under these extreme
conditions creating alternative solutions to the energy needs of the
advanced industrial nations – for example, rechargeable power
supplies for computers and mobile phones.
Despite the change of name the underlying commitment to social
entrepreneurship goals remains the same:
Lifeline Energy improves the quality of the lives of vulnerable
populations through dependable and environmentally friendly
technologies. We are committed to providing renewable energy
alternatives to those most in need
Questions
1
How could you reconcile the social agenda – make radios freely
available – with the commercial challenges of running a
business? What problems do you think Freeplay/Lifeline Energy
face in trying to sustain the business?
