When my father wired his welding workshop to the national grid in 2003, it was meant to be an investment in stability. Twenty-three years later, the line still works for eight hours on a good day. The rest of the time, the workshop runs on petrol generators that have multiplied in cost faster than his customers' willingness to pay.
He is not alone. Roughly 85 million Nigerians live in a similar arrangement — connected on paper, unreliable in practice, and forced to pay twice for the same kilowatt-hour. The economic loss is estimated at USD 26 billion a year. The human loss is harder to count.
Common Watt exists because the existing options haven't worked. The national grid will not reach most of these communities in our lifetime. Diesel is killing margins and lungs. Solar home systems can power a phone and a lamp but not the welder, the mill, or the cold store the local economy actually needs.
We think the answer is a mini-grid — a small, dedicated solar-plus-battery system serving a defined community — sold as a subscription rather than a product. Our customers don't buy panels. They pay for the electricity we deliver. We carry the upfront cost. They carry the lights.
The model exists. NXT Grid, Husk, PowerGen, and ENGIE Energy Access have built hundreds of these in Africa. What's been missing in Nigeria is a local operator with the regulatory fluency to navigate NERC and the new SERCs, the community relationships to land sites, and the operational discipline to keep them running. That is the company we are building.
Three demonstrator sites in 18 months. Twenty-five sites by year five. One million Africans served by 2031. We are very far from done. But we are starting.
Power, in common.