The German Chancellor Angela Merkel invited a delegation of hand-picked German private business leaders to join her on a trip to Senegal, Ghana and Nigeria for the last 3 days of August 2018. SOLARKIOSK’s CEO Andreas Spiess was honored to board the plane again with the Chancellor, after their successful mutual trip to Jordan and Lebanon in June, 2018.

Dr. Merkel’s delegation’s goal was for the government and private sector businesses to join forces to path the way for sustainable growth in West Africa, with a particular focus to motivate Germany-based companies to establish a presence and invest in these regions.

Andreas Spiess says: The German government has identified SOLARKIOSK as one of the game changers, because our business model can rapidly scale across Africa, thereby ensuring long-lasting triple bottom-line impact. That is, socio-economic change in an environmentally friendly way. He had a possibility to talk to major stakeholders from the civil society, the private sector and government in all three countries, and identified potential partners to work with in the future.

SOLARKIOSK is very eager to follow up on the meetings and acquaintances made, as well as deepen the dialogue with the German government. After his trip, Andreas Spiess posted this on his LinkedIn profile:

“Just returned from my trip with German chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel to West Africa. Inspiring and encouraging as there is a true alliance between private sector and government: we have to create millions of sustainable jobs in Africa NOW. Am grateful that SOLARKIOSK has been recognized by European and African leaders as a scalable solution to this challenge.

This is just the beginning.”

Photo copyrights:
SOLARKIOSK is very grateful for the photographs to Heinz-Walter Grosse and Andreas Schindler.