Egypt start up providing locally manufactured solar water heater

Mohamed Zaki Makhlouf is a 62-year-old retiree who heads an eleven-member household in an Egyptian village in the province of Fayyoum.

He has recently accepted the offer made by Shamsina, a startup social enterprise, to have a locally manufactured solar water heater installed on his rooftop. For the first time, his family may have access to a direct source of hot water. 

“I did not think twice when the company’s representative approached me. I told them they could come and install it [the heater]. There is no harm in doing such a thing neither to me nor to others. So why not do it? On the contrary, it may benefit me as well as others,” says Makhlouf.

Makhlouf lives in a two-story house with his wife, two sons, their wives and five grandchildren.

The household’s monthly income stands at EGP 5500 (nearly $178). Like millions of Egyptians, the family uses gas tanks to heat up their water on a kitchen stove.

Makhlouf’s household has fulfilled all eligibility conditions set by Shamsina - Arabic for “Our Sun” - to receive a subsidized solar water heater.

“At Shamsina, our mission is to tangibly improve the well-being of households that we target,” says Sara Mousa, Shamsina co-founder and CEO.

“We do that by reducing the time they spent to heat water, reducing the running cost of heating water, and providing them with an alternative that is healthier, safer, and better for the environment.”

Mousa is an Egyptian American who was born and raised in the United States. Growing up, she used to visit Egypt regularly with her family in the summer.

After finishing her undergraduate studies in the US in 2010, Mousa moved to Cairo, where she engaged in volunteering activities in poor neighbourhoods.

She noticed that most poor-income households use manual methods to heat their water. That was the moment she came up with the idea for her startup up.

“When we first noticed this problem, we became very curious about how common it is and we dug up national data. And we found that about half of households across Egypt are estimated to use manual methods for heating water,” says Mousa, who holds a BA in public policy from Princeton University.

She explains that these manual methods affect the air quality inside poor houses and increase the risk of burns.

“If we take a single household and they no longer use the sort of two gas tanks per month to heat their water, we cut emissions by 5 Kgs every month. This sounds really small on one household, but if we multiply that figure month after month and across millions of households, then we have a tangible dent on the CO2 emissions,” she says.

The burden of heating water for the Makhlouf’s family usually falls on Sabah Nabil, Makhlouf’s daughter-in-law. The process gets highly inconvenient in the winter.

“In the winter, I heat up water three or four times a day. My mother-in-law has feet issues, so every time she washes up before prayers, she needs hot water. Hence, she needs hot water five times a day. I also heat water to bathe my children every other day,” says Nabil, the mother of Mohamed and Waed.