BBOXX was announced as the winner of the Zayed Sustainability Prize (ZSP) in the Energy category at a prestigious awards ceremony on Monday in Abu Dhabi, UAE. The ceremony marked the official opening of the Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week, widely considered to be among the largest sustainability gatherings globally.
BBOXX was cited as being "a fast-growing company that has successfully deployed a plug and play solar device – the BBOXX – across a number of African countries, offering their customers an on-grid experience in an off-grid setting. The company won $600,000 in prize money.
Speaking about the award, BBOXX CEO Mansoor Hamayun said it is an honour to have won the ZSP and it is a testament to the way the company is making a meaningful difference to people’s lives around the world.
"It is such an honour to have won this award. We see affordable, clean and reliable electricity as being fundamental in ensuring an acceptable quality of life. This is the moral conviction of our company. We shall continue to use pioneering technology to drive disaggregation in what has traditionally been a vertically integrated market, and this is what makes us stand out from the crowd,” he said.
Hamayun believes the prize will turbo-charge BBOXX operations to scale and continue to drive disaggregation. Through this, he says BBOXX wants to show how universal access can be achieved by a set of complementary solutions in a harmonized policy.
"We want BBOXX to continue to be at the forefront of innovation in the off-grid energy market and be a credible – and trusted – solution for how to electrify an entire nation. We shall further accelerate our ability to provide reliable energy to communities in an off-grid setting by constantly investing into innovation,” he added.
Speaking about the prize, the Managing Director of BBOXX Capital Rwanda, David Easum, said the prize is an exciting reward for the passion and hard work exhibited by the team at BBOXX– who continually strive to find innovative and appropriate solutions to ensure sustainable quality of life improvements for current and future generations of rural dwellers around the developing world.
"We’ve proven that our technology can scale in a way that’s affordable to those with even the most modest of means. Winning the Zayed Sustainability Prize reinforces our conviction that we are pushing the boundaries in the right direction. We are so proud of the team and all their hard work. Their determination has improved the lives of countless Rwandans living in off-grid areas, and to be recognized through this award – the financial component in particular – motivates us to reach even farther with more and more products and services, positively impacting more and more people” he said.
BBOXX has connected over 800,000 people with clean, affordable electricity for the first time, and enabled US$2.4 million in energy cost savings around the world. In Rwanda, BBOXX has electrified over 50,000 rural households, benefiting over 250,000 individuals served by a network of 27 shops nationwide.