Aschool bag that doubles as a solar-powered light? You could expect the inventor to be a scientist.
Think again. Thato Kgatlhanye is a 22-year-old who studied art in high school and obtained a brand management degree at Vega School of Brand Leadership without studying a day of science. Kgatlhanye’s company, Repurpose Schoolbags, has won about $40,000 in competitions.
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“The start-up capital came from a business grant of $23,433 that I won in the first competition. I entered the business into the South African Breweries Foundation Innovation Awards and we came second. I’ve recently been selected as a sub-Saharan Africa finalist for the Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards, so in September I’ll be in Paris to attend that,” she says.
Kgatlhanye grew up in Mogwase, one of the townships near the mining town of Rustenburg, in South Africa’s North West province. Her father is a taxi owner and her mother is a nurse.
The idea for her bag came in the second year of college when her class was tasked to find ways of doing more with nothing. She decided to make a bag out of recycled plastic bags. The solar-powered light idea only came after a conversation she had with her mother where she was told to channel her creativity towards helping others.
“My mother told me about how she grew up and used candles to study. If she had one candle for the week and it burned out on Wednesday, she wouldn’t be able to study on Thursday and Friday. That inspired the idea,” says Kgatlhanye.
Her company in Rustenburg, which employs 17 people, designs schoolbags out of recycled plastic and integrates a solar cell which can be charged during the day and used as a study lamplight in the evening.
They make these bags for banks and companies who give them to schools. She doesn’t make more than 500 bags at a time, with one bag costing $20.
“Some of our giving partners include Red Bull, Standard bank, PricewaterhouseCoopers, SAB, ABSA/Barclays, MTN Foundation and CPSI,” says Kgatlhanye.
At a time when power cuts, so-called load shedding, loom in South Africa, Kgatlhanye’s company is well timed.
“Thank heavens for what’s playing out,” chuckles Kgatlhanye.
“Load shedding has made the business an easier sell. The big guys that sign the cheques that didn’t understand before the kind of environment we were talking about, now understand because guess what, their child gets affected by load shedding. They’ll be like ‘oh because of load shedding’ and I’m like, almost, except they don’t have electricity at all,” says Kgatlhanye.
Kgatlhanye is looking to shed light in 24 African countries.
<h4>A Spark In The Nick Of Time</h4>
The flow of renewable energy from the REIPPP couldn’t’ve come at a better time, says energy expert Chris Yelland. Eskom’s aging fleet of power stations, many built more than 30 years ago, cannot meet the demand. They have also been burdened by delays in other power generating projects in South Africa, like the Medupi and Kusile coal-powered plants.
“When Medupi and Kusile are online they will add 25% capacity to the grid. This is great. The only trouble is it should have happened 10 years ago. Between 1999 and 2004, there was a delay as a result of policy decision. Construction started in 2007 and 2008,” says Yelland.
When Medupi’s first unit came online, it was four years late. The cost keeps growing; initially it was expected to cost $2.5 billion, but is now forecasted at more than $23 billion. Kusile (4,800MW) has also failed to escape. Its first unit was expected in 2013, but has been pushed to 2017, and will cost around $92 billion, excluding the interest on delays.
Yelland is a Johannesburg-based electrical engineer turned energy journalist and entrepreneur. He has had a lot to talk about over the last 10 years, but his favorite story is the work of renewable energy dreamers.
“That’s the only success story we have to tell. The success stories are not government success stories, they are private: private capital, private technology – built, owned and operated privately, and generated into the grid,” he says.
Yelland warns that renewables should not be South Africa’s only solution.
“It costs less to produce coal-fired electricity than renewable if you compare apples with apples. If you look at the existing fleet of power stations, the cost per kilowatt hour is certainly lower than the cost to produce renewable energy. But the cost of electricity from a new power station, like Medupi, is a lot higher than the average costs. Because that capital cost is higher.”
For Africa, energy at any price is welcome.

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