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Community-based Marketing of GIT's Clean Energy Products Supported by Milimo Activity Increases Demand and Sells at Masumbankhunda

Established in 2018, Green Impact Technologies (GIT) is one of the organisations in the private sector that are being supported with organisational capacity development activities by the USAID funded Milimo Local Capacity Building Activity in Malawi. GIT’s mission is to accelerate innovations and solutions that improve the livelihoods of low-income communities by providing access to transformative technologies. Such technologies include clean energy sources like solar panels and gas stoves which are environmentally friendly.


Being a profit-making company, GIT regards marketing as one of its most important activities in order to create demand for its products. However, according to Peter Chilongo who is GIT’s Communications Officer, the company has been relying on usual online marketing methods for so long like adverts on social media and website which are mostly accessible by people in towns. This has been limiting their reach especially in rural areas where they also desire to create more demand. “A lot of people we reach out to are off grid low-income communities so l feel like we do not really meet our target audience since a lot of the village people are not on social media”, said Peter.


In February 2024, the Milimo Activity connected GIT to Chamadzi CBO to collaborate on marketing of various products to the community members of TA Masumbankhunda. According to GIT’s Programs Manager Wezzie Nkhoma, this collaboration effort has created high demand for solar home systems in the area and this demand has been increasing ever since. “When Milimo Activity linked us to the Chamadzi CBO, we were invited through the CBO to market our product at Masumbankhunda Area Development Committee (ADC) and on the same day, 10 households demanded solar home systems which they purchased immediately”, said Nkhoma. “Ever since this day, we have been making more sells and we now have 50 customers in the area as of April 2024”, Nkhoma added. The solar home system set contains a solar panel, 4 lighting bulbs, a radio set and a phone charger.


According to Edina Lomani who is one of the community members that are now using the solar home systems set from GIT, he decided to buy the product when he attended the marketing event the GIT and the ADC organised. “I am so happy to have this solar home system in my house because I use the same for lighting, charging my phone and using the radio for entertainment unlike in the past when I had to be paying K50 daily to have my phone charged at one of the barbershops”, testified Lomani who hails from Kambewa village, TA Masumbankunda. He is a farmer, married and has four children.    


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