Intelligence Infrastructure for Africa's Energy Grid
Asoba builds the data and AI infrastructure that makes distributed renewable energy readable, tradeable, and insurable at scale. We unify fragmented OEM data into open standards, layer commercial intelligence on top, and give operators, regulators, and investors the clarity to act.
The Problem
The Renewable Grid-Edge is Choking on a Data Interoperability Crisis
Distributed renewable energy (DRE) has scaled from isolated rooftop systems to massive, multi-gigawatt installations. In South Africa alone, behind-the-meter rooftop solar has surged to 8,294 MW—now outstripping the country's entire grid-tied utility-scale renewable fleet. At the same time, NERSA has registered over 19.3 GW of private generation.
However, the digital operating model remains broken. The transition from a centralized monopoly grid to dynamic, peer-to-peer markets has triggered a severe grid-edge translation deficit:
- Inverter API Lock-In: Every major hardware manufacturer gates its telemetry behind proprietary, inconsistent formats and rate-limited cloud interfaces, forcing engineering teams into continuous "parser hell."
- Spreadsheet Chaos: Field dispatch notes, billing, and maintenance histories remain trapped in manual, unstructured formats, forcing operators to react to faults rather than proactively optimizing performance.
- Settlement & Trading Gaps: As competitive wholesale trading and private wheeling markets take flight under SAWEM, reconciling raw, complex half-hour utility meter files (like Eskom AMR profiles) with actual generation is settled manually via error-prone spreadsheets.
This data fragmentation introduces massive systemic risk, contributing to over $10 billion in global solar underperformance losses annually.
The Intervention
Three Layers of Intelligence Infrastructure
Open Protocol
ODSE
The open standard for energy asset data interchange. Apache-licensed, it standardizes inverter telemetry across manufacturers into a single schema. Install with pip install odse and start normalizing data from any OEM in minutes.
Commercial SaaS
Ona
The commercial renewable asset intelligence platform built on ODSE. Portfolio monitoring, AI-driven fault detection, day-ahead forecasting, yield optimization, and automated regulatory reporting — delivered as a multi-tenant SaaS dashboard.
AI Research Layer
Nehanda & Zorora
Zorora leverages our custom fine-tune of Qwen3.6 27B built on extra layers of SFT and DPO training for epistemic soundness critical for deep market research into emerging economy energy markets via satellite imaging, regulatory intelligence, and synthesis of hard-to-find financial data.
Our Strategy
Platform Formation, Not Software Sales
Asoba’s strategy mirrors the pattern of successful infrastructure platforms: give away the protocol, monetize the premium intelligence layer.
ODS-E is free, open source, and licensed under Apache 2.0 / CC-BY-SA 4.0. It reduces the technical cost of data integration to zero for performance analysts. Every engineering team that downloads the SDK to escape "parser hell" naturally normalizes their data layer. Once their databases are standardized on ODS-E, the integration friction to upgrade to Ona—the commercial platform that converts raw standardized streams into investor-ready financial metrics and automated wheeling settlements—falls to zero.
Every new megawatt standardized on ODS-E directly improves the forecasting, dispatch, and settlement accuracy of our commercial network.
Operations
Cape Town HQ, Global Focus
Asoba is headquartered in Cape Town, South Africa, with operations across the SAPP region including South Africa and Zimbabwe, as well as in the United States. Our partnerships span energy operators, sustainability organizations, and technology providers who share our conviction that distributed energy needs an intelligence layer.
Meet Our Team
The visionaries and operators building Africa's energy intelligence infrastructure.
Shingai Samudzi
Founder & CEO
Driving AI-driven forecasting and dispatch optimization solutions for electricity wheeling, grid operations, and energy trading. Previously AI product development at Google and commercial solar strategy at Lumen Energy, with extensive experience at the intersection of policy, data science, and go to market strategy. Carnegie Mellon graduate with background in decision science and international relations.
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Gertie Ogojiaku
Co-Founder & COO
Leading company-wide operational strategy and execution for Asoba's AI-driven energy platform. Previously served as Head of Operations and Project Engineer at New Earth Energy, managing PV installations and SSEG applications. Chemical Engineering graduate from University of the Witwatersrand with expertise in renewable energy project management.
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Chiwoneso Mashapure
Marketing Lead
Leading marketing strategy and brand development for Asoba's energy intelligence platform. Focused on communicating the value of distributed AI infrastructure to energy stakeholders across Africa. Building awareness and adoption of our solutions in the renewable energy sector.
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Ann Buenvenida
Administrative Lead
Managing administrative operations and supporting the team's day-to-day functions. Ensuring smooth operations across all departments and maintaining the organizational infrastructure that enables our mission of energy independence across Africa.
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