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Babajide Oluwase of RenewDrive is Our #BellaNaijaMCM this Week!
For our #BellaNaijaMCM feature this week, we celebrate Babajide Oluwase, a green economy explorer and an innovator with keen interest in environment, spatial planning, clean energy and business development.
Babajide is the founder/CEO of RenewDrive, a startup that designs and develops innovative Clean-Tech solutions especially for people who live in rural areas and have per capita income of less than US$2 per day.
The problem RenewDrive is solving is the affordability and access to dependable clean energy solutions. Currently, its business is service-based for fruit and vegetable farmers and it’s mainly centred on solving food storage related challenges in developing countries. RenewDrive designs and installs affordable, solar-powered walk-in storage hubs – Ecotutu – for fruit and vegetable farmers.
With Ecotutu, RenewDrive is pioneering a revolutionary way to preserve fruits and vegetables for a fraction of the cost and energy consumption of large conventional refrigerators. Ecotutu is a solar-powered walk-in evaporative solution against post-harvest losses in developing countries. The system is designed to be used for on-farm cooling and storage after harvest to enable farmers store and preserve fresh perishables until they get to end-consumers.
RenewDrive’s model also promotes the engagement of women and youth, especially in rural communities. Most of them are farmers who help collect, sort and process agricultural waste into biochar. RenewDrive then processes it into carbon-neutral briquette. This has directly benefitted livelihood of local farmers by turning waste into wealth – which may have otherwise been burnt – as well as creating economic opportunity for women and youth in a sustainable manner.
Babajide has a mini-MBA from Lagos Business School (Venture In Management Programme) and a B.Tech (Hons) in Urban and Regional Planning from Federal University of Technology Akure.
Babajide is a Sustainable Solutions Africa 30 under 30 Fellow, Earth Charter Young Leader, TEF/GIZ Fellow (2019), George Ayittey Platinum Prize Winner, LEAP Africa SIP Fellow (2019/20) and a Global Shaper of the Global Shapers Community.
Babajide is also the author of “The Young Climate Heroes” to sensitize children about global warming and climate change. The book uses story and comical illustration to simplify technical terms underlying global warming and climate change, to enable children easily understand and take action.
We celebrate Babajide for his contribution to the achievement of some of the sustainable development goals and for helping rural farmers earn more from their harvest. We’re rooting for him!
