Piloting e-mobility in Casamance’s waterways
Jokosun Energies in collaboration with the Frontier Technology Hub and the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) is testing the feasibility of introducing electric outboard motors in the waterways of Casamance. Here is how it has unfolded so far and what we have learnt from our first field visits.
In November 2021 a marketplace-of-ideas was organized in Ziguinchor, Senegal and people from different backgrounds were invited to discuss the idea of piloting an e-mobility project with a view of introducing electric boats to the region to provide a cheaper and greener alternative to water mobility. The inspiration for this project came from reading about Asobo’s pilot of electric boats on Lake Victoria.
As a result of this event, an Invitation to Tender for a pilot project on e-mobility called ELEK TEY was published and JokoSun Energies was selected as the implementing partner. Jokosun Energies is the Senegalese sister company of Jokosun, a company based in France that works on energy access finance. In Senegal we are specializing in last mile distribution of solar technologies in off-grid areas. This means we provide domestic and productive use solar systems with a Pay-As-You-Go platform that allows our customers to pay in small installments until the initial cost of the kit is fully reimbursed. The ELEK TEY pilot therefore provided a great opportunity for Jokosun to explore a new market segment and to work with the Frontier Tech hub and their innovative SPRINTS. Let us walk you through our findings from our first sprint.
What do we know?
Before starting our first sprint, we actually did not know much about boat traffic in the Casamance waterways. We knew there was a ferry commuting between Dakar and Ziguinchor. We also knew there were other categories of boatmen in the area such as fishermen, transportation boats called Courriers, and touristic boats owned by hotels, agencies or independent professionals. What they had in common was that they all use petrol outboard motors which are noisy, polluting, expensive, are heavily dependent on fuel availability and thus subject to price fluctuation.
For this first Sprint we wanted to challenge our preconceived ideas of how things currently operate in the area and set out to identify a specific user group who would be willing to trial the new technology, and learn more about their mobility needs.
We went out with the aim of talking to as many boat actors as possible but with the view of prioritizing fishermen as our main use case. We made that choice because we felt fishermen were the category that could benefit the most from the introduction of eclectic motors. However, we wanted to talk to other potential beneficiaries such as touristic boatmen and Courriers to build a comprehensive understanding of the context in which we would be operating. These three categories represented the most active boat users in the area. So we were able to identify our use cases as follows:
* Fishermen: our primary use case as they use the river as their main source of livelihood. There are two categories of fishermen: a small livelihood fishery which consists of fishing in the bolong for a couple of days in order to provide food for their families; and a more business oriented fishery, although still artisanal, where the boats go further in the open sea for several weeks at a time to bring in enough fish they will sell to local market or processing industries. In the latter category, most fishermen travel more than 40 nautical miles per trip in search of fish and some go as far as Guinea Bissau on the high seas.
* Courriers: These are transport boats commuting between Ziguinchor and the numerous surrounding islands or peninsulas. As you can see in the map above, there are several villages that are easier to reach via the river bolongs than by road. These communities are heavily dependent on water transport to go about their business. So, they have implemented a public river transport service called Courrier which commutes between Ziguinchor and their islands every other day.
* Tourist pirogues: these pirogues are used by tourist guides to arrange excursions in the bolongs or for sport fishing. As this activity is seasonal, most of these pirogues transition to full time fishermen when the tourist season is over which coincides with the rainy season between May and October.
In order to build the above use cases, we spoke with about 30 boatmen to understand as much as possible about their activities, thus allowing us to select the right use case to trial our technology. The right target will not only inform the innovation and what is required for it to be more suitable to their needs but will also help to support uptake by generating user buy-in. We also wanted to assess how they felt about transitioning to a greener alternative and what were the reasons for that willingness to transition. To achieve that we tried to gather data on how far they traveled per trip, what their touring itinerary is, how much they would spend on fuel for a trip, and which type of motors they currently use.
Getting people to talk about their daily movements was not an easy task. We found that it was easier to get touristic boatmen to talk about their activities than fishermen, probably because their job requires them to explain things to strangers more often than a fisherman or a Courrier boatman. One thing that was interesting to note was that the courriers and touristic boatmen were less worried about motor power and battery life than fishermen. That can be explained by the distances fishermen are covering per trip and which sometimes triples the distances the others would cover.
Another interesting fact was that we received the most accurate information from fishermen I knew or had met on a personal level before. This connection meant that they would gladly share information and would point out to other colleagues who would instantly be more open to sharing. This shows the level of ground work one needs to do before starting a community based project. Connecting with the end user at a human level will build that sense of trust and incentivise them to test the new technology. Where trust is lacking, projects often see the user as potential customers or prospects rather than potential partners whose life you can positively affect and who can be one of your most valuable assets. To this day one of my best salespeople was a satisfied customer.
There are other factors behind the fact that people were not enthusiastically willing to share information. One of which is a regional (traditional) barrier between north and south in Senegal. The country is separated in two by The Gambia and not so long ago, there were secessionist conflicts from people who wanted to make Casamance an independent country. Despite the conflict being in the past, trust issues still remain. Moreover, many people from the Casamance community have seen false promises from potential projects. This lack of trust has meant that they instinctively restrain themselves from getting involved in new activity until they see concrete things happening. This means to be extremely practical moving forward and that it is absolutely necessary to include them in selecting/testing the motors and give them enough room to suggest what could be more suitable for them. The trials need to be theirs, going into their communities, testing the motors at the same trips they would do for their activities.
Using the data we had gathered on the types of motors used and distances they usually travelled, we created a whatsapp group with 10 people who would be our testing population when the motors are available. These people are fishermen, touristic boatmen and one courrier boatman. One of our key criteria was the need to have a smartphone for the Strava app.
In order to gather the data we required on our user group’s mobility needs, we shared the Strava app within the Whatsapp group for them to be able to trace their activities. Strava is a tracking app used generally for mapping outdoor sports activities. In our case it would have allowed us to trace the exact itinerary of boatmen during their activities, thus facilitating a mapping of the distances they cover per trip. The idea was to have more precise data to share with the electric motor suppliers in order to identify an electric boat engine suitable for our use case. For the Whatsapp group as well as the Strava app, the tourist people were more responsive. Most of them downloaded the app but none could share itineraries. This is probably down to connection failures in the islands. Some of them could share information on the group but using the app seemed a bit too technological for now. This means we had to gather information by trusting what they said and that we will have to do the mapping with them next time we are in the field.
Finding the right Motors for the right Use Cases
Using the information we gathered from our three use cases, we went to the electric motor suppliers to find out whether they had a solution that matches our needs. Conversations were held with numerous potential suppliers including Torqeedo, FinX and eclassboats. Whilst each supplier presented an option, the FinX Fin5 motor currently lacked the power to meet the needs of our use cases. So, the choice has been reduced to finding a suitable partnership arrangement to test the futuristic design of the Torqeedo T-Cruise range or the retrofitting outboard solution from EClassOutBoards.
What’s next?
Our next Sprint will hopefully be about selecting and testing ranges of motors in the country. Since we know that we need a motor whose power is equivalent to the 15hp Yamaha mostly in use in the field, we are turning our attention to the Retrofitting motors as they look closer to what is being used in the field. We will be able to tell you more about it after our next SPRINT so stay tuned…
