Sun King has expanded its offering to underserved consumers across Africa, combining the launch of its own smartphone and solar-powered fridge-freezer with the scale-up of its clean cooking technologies and services.
Sun King is known for powering homes and businesses with solar kits delivered through pay-as-you-go financing. The company is now extending that approach to Sun King–designed smartphones, clean cooking solutions, and refrigeration, making essential technologies affordable through small, flexible payments.
From pay-as-you-go solar to pay-as-you-go smartphones
The company recently launched the Sun King EZ 1, its first smartphone designed for and assembled locally in Africa.
Africa’s smartphone economy is growing rapidly, with the mobile sector accounting for around 7% (US$140 billion) of the continent’s GDP in 2023 and projected to reach US$170 billion by 2030. Yet, access remains deeply uneven. For millions of people, the cost of a smartphone, not the availability of mobile networks, is the primary barrier to getting online.
This affordability gap disproportionately affects women, low-income households, and young people, excluding many from education, digital finance, healthcare information, and work opportunities.
“Customers have been asking Sun King to build a smartphone for years,” said T. Patrick Walsh, CEO and Co-Founder of Sun King. “Our solar systems already power phones, but for too many families the device itself is still out of reach. EZ 1 applies the same built-for-purpose approach we pioneered in energy access to connectivity.”
The EZ 1 android smartphone is engineered for off- and unreliable-grid environments and is assembled in Africa at Sun King’s manufacturing facility in Kiambu County, Kenya. The device is available in Kenya today, with additional market rollouts planned.
Innovation for a cooler future
More than one billion people globally lack access to reliable refrigeration, limiting food security, small-business productivity, and medical services. Where refrigeration exists, it often depends on costly and polluting diesel or petrol generators to compensate for weak or unreliable grids.
Sun King is addressing this challenge through PowerFreeze, its first solar-powered refrigerator and freezer. PowerFreeze runs directly on solar and battery, eliminating the need for grid electricity or generators and removing fuel costs and blackout risk.
The system can operate as both a refrigerator and a freezer. As an added benefit, PowerFreeze can also power phones, laptops, and lighting. PowerFreeze sales began on a limited basis in Nigeria in late 2025, with national rollout coming soon.
“PowerFreeze has shown clear value for the food vendors and households in Nigeria who are already using it, particularly those dealing with food spoilage caused by unreliable power,” said Anish Thakkar, Co-Founder, Sun King. “For small businesses, avoiding diesel generators can materially improve margins. For families, it means less food wasted and more predictable household costs.”
Unlocking clean cooking
Since 2023, Sun King has been refining a suite of clean cooking technologies and fuel distribution services, applying the same principles that enabled solar to scale: pay-as-you-go financing, smart hardware and software, and a wide installation and service network.
Sun King’s clean cooking programme combines modern cooking equipment with flexible payments and reliable fuel supply, allowing households to switch away from wood and charcoal without high upfront costs. The EasyCook offering is designed for different household contexts, improving safety, affordability, and convenience while cutting emissions.
Sun King’s LPG smart cooking systems use pay-as-you-go enabled meters that allow families to pay incrementally for gas, much as they already purchase charcoal or firewood. The system monitors fuel use, predicts when cylinders will run low, and triggers timely replacements, helping households, including in rural areas, access clean, modern cooking fuels reliably and safely.
Pilots in Kenya are already reaching thousands of households with cleaner, safer cooking alternatives. Following this phase, Sun King plans to scale clean cooking solutions across Kenya and internationally, leveraging its existing agent network, service infrastructure, and consumer protection systems.
“Over the past two years, we’ve been refining not just our clean cooking technology, but also the fuel top-up service that sits behind it,” said Mark O’Keefe, Director of Clean Cooking, Sun King. “Customer feedback across Kenya has been clear: people value the convenience, reliability, time saved, and the health and safety benefits of moving away from wood and charcoal. That response is what’s driving our decision to scale clean cooking more widely across Kenya, with a view to expanding into other markets over time. There is also a clear climate benefit: switching from charcoal or wood to LPG significantly reduces greenhouse-gas emissions from cooking.”
Scaling and Diversifying to Meet Customers’ Needs
Sun King operates last-mile solar installation and service networks in 12 countries, with distribution partnerships in 40 more. The company continues to scale to meet demand for affordable technologies, now delivering more than 350,000 solar kits each month, up from around 10,000 per month in 2017.
Millions of homes and businesses rely on Sun King not just for solar power, but also for the essential appliances it powers — including lighting, TVs, fans, and radios — which Sun King has designed and distributed for many years. This new set of appliances expands Sun King’s existing offering to clients meeting underserved families and businesses’ need for vital technology and services.
Sun King’s expansion into these new technologies is supported by the same distribution and after-sales infrastructure that has underpinned its solar growth, including a 37,000-strong agent network, logistics capability and customer support systems designed to serve mass-market customers reliably at scale.
