An African Rural Electric Utility

Investing in sustainable infrastructure in rural African communities.

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An African Rural Electric Utility

Investing in sustainable infrastructure in rural African communities.

DELIVERING GRID-Quality POWER TO RURAL COMMUNITIES ACROSS AFRICA.

Virunga Power develops, invests in, and operates distributed renewable power generation and grid distribution projects that bring reliable and low-cost power to rural communities in Africa. Our private utility projects and companies are active in development, construction, and operations across East and Southern Africa. We jointly develop, finance, and operate projects with local developers, rural communities, and governments across the region to bring electrification and sustainable economic growth to new electricity consumers and those who are currently not effectively served by national utilities.

Access to Energy

Connection to grid electricity means the power to access economic opportunity.

Access to Energy

Connection to grid electricity means the power to access economic opportunity.

Energy That Can BE USED to Access the 21st Century GLOBAL Economy.

Our projects are designed to bring reliable, unlimited, uninterrupted, and low-cost electricity to new power consumers living in predominately rural areas. Our focus is on bringing the benefits of electricity to households, businesses, and industry across the region to help drive economic growth and development in the communities where we operate and invest.

Local Solutions

Localized renewable generation, localized grid distribution, local partnerships. Global investment profile.

Local Solutions

Localized renewable generation, localized grid distribution, local partnerships. Global investment profile.

Local partners.

Each of our projects incorporates the local community and/or government and its leaders into the development and operations. We also work closely with community project leaders and local developers in a number of markets and coordinate our efforts with national strategic development priorities.

Local renewable sources.

We use the renewable resources available in a community to generate power and distribute it back to the community members. Our technological focus is run-of-river small hydropower, supplying renewable baseload power to support grid stability.

Local distribution.

Our distribution networks bring the generated power to the doorstep of the community members, their businesses, and the industry in their areas. We develop and operate low and medium voltage smart networks with pre-paid metering to limit losses and deliver safe, clean energy to our consumers.

Global investment PRofile.

Our projects and companies reflect rigorous development and operational processes, engineering and design, and environmental and social impact studies to ensure that investments are bankable and familiar to global infrastructure investors.

Who we are

Meet the people that make up the Virunga Power corporate team.

Who we are

Meet the people that make up the Virunga Power corporate team.

The VIrunga Power TEam

Brian Kelly

CEO, Founder

Brian brings almost two decades of emerging markets power and utilities development and investing experience to Virunga Power. After starting his career in power sector Mergers & Acquisitions as an investment banker in Asia, he moved to Africa to start Virunga Power in 2011 and subsequently also led investment strategy during the formation and launch years of a renewable energy private equity fund. His passion is to bridge the gap between global infrastructure investment and the opportunity to develop, finance, and operate projects and companies that bring electricity to the unconnected and under-served areas of sub-Saharan Africa.

Brian has a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, and lives with his family in Nairobi, Kenya.

Josiah Brand

Chief Operating Officer

Josiah joined Virunga Power full-time in 2019 as the COO, having been involved externally since the company’s concept stage. He brings to the company a wealth of prior experience in operations, strategy, and management that includes work as a utility operations Director at Alix Partners in the US and Caribbean, in operational efficiency and strategic planning at Ernst & Young, and as an officer in the US Marine Corps. He leads Virunga Power’s day-to-day operations and plays a key role in strategy, investment, and project development.

Josiah has a BS in Finance from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Columbia University and London Business School. He lives with his family in South Africa.