
Battery Rentals Move From South African Townships to Lagos
Startup bPOWERd is selling backup power as a subscription, betting Africans will pay for reliable electricity the way they already pay for data and mobile money.

Abena Owusu
West Africa Editor · Accra
Across much of Africa, consumers have grown used to paying for access rather than ownership: mobile data instead of fixed contracts, streaming instead of DVDs, and mobile money without a bank account. Electricity is now following the same logic, and a South African startup is trying to prove the shift can travel across the continent.
As TechCabal reported, more South Africans are renting batteries to keep homes and small businesses running through power cuts, rather than spending heavily on generators, inverters or rooftop solar. Companies such as bPOWERd are building on the idea that reliable electricity can be sold as a subscription instead of expensive hardware. With electricity prices climbing, grids still unreliable and household budgets under pressure, treating power as a service is becoming more appealing than owning the equipment.
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