Why we're betting on solar electricity after LPG, not before
If you've spoken to any rural-energy founder in Nigeria over the last five years, you've probably heard a solar pitch. Solar is the obvious story. It's clean, it's distributed, it's photogenic, it's where the development-finance attention sits. So when investors ask why FahmanEnergy launched as a cooking-gas company instead, the question deserves a real answer. Here it is.
The case for leading with LPG
1. Cooking is the loudest energy pain in a rural household
Walk into 100 rural homes in Kwara and ask "what's the most painful energy problem in your week?" The top answer, in almost every survey we've run, is firewood collection and cooking smoke — not lighting, not phone charging, not refrigeration. A solar lantern is nice. Not having to walk three hours for wood is life-changing.
Leading with the customer's biggest pain point earns the right to sell them the second product. Leading with the second product first earns you a polite no.
2. LPG works today; solar at scale needs a credit infrastructure that doesn't yet exist
An LPG refill is a cash-on-delivery transaction: ₦9,000 changes hands, the cylinder goes home, the meal happens. Risk is closed in one transaction.
A solar home system is a 24-month receivable. Even at modest sizes, the upfront cost of a 200W system + battery + installation is ₦180,000–₦240,000 — far above what a rural household pays in cash. So solar requires consumer credit, mobile-money rails, repayment monitoring, and a default-recovery process. Each of those infrastructures takes years to build trust around. Selling LPG for cash for two years is the cheapest, fastest way to build the customer-relationship muscle we'll need before we can responsibly extend credit.
3. Cylinder distribution is the hardest part — solve it once, ship anything
The genuine moat in last-mile rural energy isn't the product, it's the channel. Building a network of kiosk operators in agro-cluster towns + motorcycle riders serving surrounding villages + reliable inventory replenishment + customer trust takes 18–36 months and is the bottleneck that kills almost every well-funded rural energy plan.
Once that channel exists for a 12.5 kg cylinder, the same channel can carry a 200W solar panel, a battery, an inverter, a clean cookstove, a subscription water filter — anything within the kiosk operator's competence to install or hand over. The cylinder is the wedge product; the channel is the long-term asset.
4. The trust dividend
You don't put a solar panel on someone's roof on Day 1 of a relationship. You do it in Year 2, after they've watched you deliver eighteen reliable cylinder refills, after the kiosk operator has shown up every Tuesday and Friday like clockwork, after their neighbour has talked them into trying it. Trust is built one cylinder at a time — and then it spends like a credit line on the bigger ticket.
We are not a gas company that will become a solar company. We are a last-mile clean-energy distribution company, and the cylinder is just the first product through the channel. — FahmanEnergy operating principle
The sequence, in calendar form
- 2024–2025: Build and license the 10MT plant; launch Ilorin operations; first 200 households served in Ilesha Baruba.
- 2026: Scale to 3 kiosk towns; launch 3 kg starter-cylinder pilot; reach 5,000 active households.
- 2027: Plants 2 and 3 commissioned; 30,000 active LPG households; pay-as-you-cook financing live.
- 2028: Solar electricity launches as a paired offering to LPG households. Initial target: 200 connections via existing kiosk network.
- 2029–2030: Solar scales to 5,000 connections; LPG to 100,000 households.
The risk this strategy doesn't carry
Three failure modes we have explicitly removed by sequencing this way:
- Solar inventory sitting unsold because the channel wasn't ready. Capital trapped in panels that haven't found a roof is the most common rural-solar death.
- Defaulting credit pools from extending PAYG financing before customer trust was built. The first cohort of customers gets credit; their behaviour determines who gets it next.
- Brand confusion from being a "solar company" while every customer interaction is actually a cooking-gas conversation. We are crystal clear about who we are today and what we will be tomorrow.
What this means for the 2028 launch
By the time we open solar bookings in 2028, we expect:
- ~30,000 active LPG households who already pay us reliably each month — a captive, pre-qualified market.
- 20+ kiosk operators trained, paid and trusted — the installation and after-sale workforce.
- Two years of mobile-money repayment data on the pay-as-you-cook financing line — calibration for solar credit underwriting.
- Federal and state relationships built through NMDPRA-licensed plant operations — the regulatory posture to move fast on solar deployment.
Most rural solar startups have to build all of that from a cold start while their inventory ages. We will start with all of it warm. That's the strategic prize for going second.
If you're thinking about rural energy strategy from any angle — investing, building, financing, regulating — we'd enjoy comparing notes. Fahmanltd@gmail.com.