Dozie Igweilo is the founder and CEO of QuadLoop- a Lagos-based electronics manufacturing start-up company, turning e-waste into solar-powered lanterns. The solar-powered lanterns are used by small businesses to stay productive if there are power outages.
QuadLoop also offers hardware devices, solar-powered lamps, and gas monitoring systems.
The company aims to source 70 percent of its materials from electronic waste. QuadLoop recycles lithium batteries from dumped old laptops for its solar lanterns. It collects electronic waste from companies, tests its durability, and uses it to build solutions.
Dozie was born in Lagos and studied economics at the University of Ibadan.
According to an interview by VCBay, global funding news for start-ups and venture capital, Dozie revealed that he loved electronics since secondary school, as he fixed mobile phones.
He revealed that after his NYSC, he got a job as a field service technician for telecoms in 2015, during the IHS power swap project.
“We were supposed to take out the diesel generators and install a solar hybrid system. So that was my first-hand experience with solar panels,” he said.
After researching ways to use electronic hardware, Dozie came up with his first solution called Bliss Solar Lamp in 2017.
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Bliss is an eco-friendly lamp that provides rural and low-income communities with clean energy. It uses circuit LED batteries to provide local communities access to electricity, replacing kerosene lanterns.
In 2018, he was a sales associate for Greenlight planet- a global leader in solar home energy products.
From October 2019 to January 2020, he was an intern for four months in a semicolon techpreneurship program.
Furthermore, in 2020, he was a solar power consultant at Zola Electric- one of Africa’s leading renewable energy providers.
In August 2020, QuadLoop received a $10,000 grant from the Nigerian Climate Innovation Centre.
From December 2021 to June this year, he was a research fellow in ifair Isreal Nigeria, in Abuja.
QuadLoop Africa won an award themed “Innovating Renewable Energy” at the Nigeria Innovation Awards Night (NIAN) on October 8 2022.
Recently, Dozie told Reuters he came up with the idea (QuadLoop) after discovering a market for affordable, locally produced electrical goods, for which components were not available in the country.
“At that point, we noticed that if we leverage on electronic waste, we are going to cut down the cost of production as well as the cost of sales, and that is what brought us to where we are today,” Dozie said.
