Why This 48-Year-Old Woman Is Building Ghana's Biggest Solar Farm

For over 10 years, one 48-year-old business visionary in Ghana has been discreetly developing a multimillion-dollar oil and gas equip called UBI Group. Salma Okonkwo is an uncommon lady to head up a vitality organization in Africa. "I don't stop when the entryway is being closed. I figure out how to influence it to function," Okonkwo told Forbes. "That is the thing that impelled my prosperity."

She's presently extending her range over Ghana's vitality industry, taking a shot at an autonomous side task that may turn into the greatest in her vocation. Okonkwo is building Ghana's greatest sun based ranch, called Blue Power Energy, slated to open in March 2019 with 100 megawatts of vitality. It's set to be one of the biggest in Africa.

"A large portion of the multinational organizations that come to Ghana don't put in foundation. They work a framework where they contribute almost no and they take it away. They offer their items and leave," Okonkwo says. "I'm wanting to give work and add to Ghana's economy."

Executive of UBI Group Salma Okonkwo.UBI GROUP

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Okonkwo experienced childhood in Accra, one of 14 kids destined to a land operator and engineer mother and a dairy cattle merchant father. She frequently went by her grandma in her family's hereditary town. She's an individual from the Akan tribe, whose ladies frequently offer items they make, similar to sandwiches or smoked fish, to ensure their kids are accommodated—and that left a permanent stamp on Okonkwo. "The ladies didn't know how to peruse and compose, however they knew how to make an edge," Okonkwo says.

In the wake of moving on from an all-young ladies life experience school with small running water, Okonkwo moved to Los Angeles for school at Loyola Marymount University. (Her family could pay her educational cost.) She graduated in 1994 and quickly worked in California for a nourishment financier organization. At that point oil and gas organization Sahara Energy Group enrolled her; Okonkwo came back to Accra in 2003 for the activity.

Inside a couple of years, Okonkwo understood that the firm could develop by opening up retail service stations. She displayed the thought a few times throughout the years, however each time she was reproached. Officials disclosed to her they wouldn't change their marketable strategy since it would be excessively political and would require excessively of an interest in framework.

At 36 years of age in 2006, Okonkwo chose she'd heard "no" too often and quit to attempt it herself, concentrating on conveying liquified oil gas to the difficult to-achieve area of northern Ghana, where numerous families still depend on consuming kindling for vitality. Since Okonkwo's dad was from northern Ghana, she knew firsthand how the business could change lives there. "It was simply too difficult to leave behind the opportunity," Okonkwo reviews. "It looked very lucrative."

Be that as it may, Okonkwo hit an early obstacle when she understood that she didn't consider a muddling factor: The North had few storerooms for the liquified gas. To get it to the remote area, she'd need to fabricate the capacity herself, and she was at that point attempting to anchor subsidizing. So Okonkwo rotated and began exchanging diesel and oil discount. An agreement to supply fuel to Dallas-based Kosmos Energy came in 2007, trailed by one with Hess in 2008. In the good 'ol days, she financed the activity by selling a few properties that her family and spouse had acquired.

A UBI Group retail corner store in Ghana.UBI GROUP.

By 2008, UBI opened its first retail corner store. It before long possessed 8 altogether and dealt with another 20 through associations. That grabbed the attention of Singapore-based multinational firm Puma Energy, which had 2017 offers of $15 billion from activities in 49 nations. Jaguar obtained a 49% stake in two of UBI Group's auxiliaries (retail service stations and discount fuel appropriation) in 2013 for about $150 million.

After the incomplete securing in 2013, Okonkwo says, she began building up her sun oriented organization. She assesses the organization will spend about $100 million—financed by generally $30 million in advances—to make 100 megawatts of sun based power by right on time one year from now. Development began before this late spring. The arrangement is to include another 100 megawatts before the finish of 2020.

In spite of all the daylight in Africa, sun powered power is anything but a conspicuous vitality source on the mainland. Most homesteads are amassed in South Africa and Kenya. In 2009, Morocco declared plans to construct one of the greatest sun oriented homesteads on the planet. The first of the undertaking's three stages opened in 2016. "I don't know about another vast scale venture like this in Africa that is driven by a lady," says Arne Jacobson, who has been considering sustainable power source with an attention on Africa since 1998 and is currently the executive of Humboldt State University's Schatz Energy Research Center. "Power is genuinely costly in nations like Ghana. On the off chance that they can minimize expenses, this is will be a gainful wander."

The venture is additionally individual for Okonkwo. Half of the sunlight based ranch will be situated in her dad's town in northern Ghana. The rest will be spread out all through the North, which is Ghana's poorest locale, as per Unicef. The association says the zone has seen the littlest improvement as far as destitution diminishment since the 1990s.

There are so few business openings in the north of Ghana other than cultivating that most ladies relocate to Accra searching for work. Many can just discover employments as "kayayo"— working in business sectors conveying products for clients, now and then known as "living shopping bins." They live in ghettos and consistently continue badgering, burglary and even assault. Okonkwo, expecting to make a superior option for a portion of these ladies, says Blue Power Energy has just made many occupations in northern Ghana and that more than 650 will be made upon finishing.

Okonkwo's definitive objective is to convey shabby vitality to northern Ghana through the sun based homestead, which she expectations will boost organizations to make enduring occupations there. Meanwhile, she is opening multi day-mind focus in Accra for youngsters destined to kayayo ladies, where, as she clarifies, they can "get instructed and ideally break the cycle."