Meet Akonkwa Mubagwa, MPA'26, co-founder and CEO of Winko Solar, a member of the 2025-26 Climate Circle accelerator cohort, and a student at the Harvard Kennedy School. The venture is building resilient, intelligent solar energy systems that power life-saving healthcare infrastructure across some of Africa’s most challenging environments. From oxygen concentrators to vaccine cold-chain, Winko Solar integrates clean energy with critical medical technology, bringing reliability, safety, and continuity of care to places where it’s needed most.
In this recent Q+A with the Harvard Innovation Labs, Mubagwa discusses the problem they’re solving, what it takes to deploy these systems in the field, and how climate innovation can strengthen health outcomes in emerging markets.
What inspired you to start your venture?
One of my earliest childhood memories is of burglars breaking into our home in Zimbabwe during a power outage. When the lights go out, safety disappears. We exist in a world where our deepest sense of security comes from knowing that if something goes wrong, we can rely on care, on protection, on stability. That safety is the foundation that allows us to dream, to learn, to create. Too many people live without it. We aim to restore a sense of safety for every person in Africa by building reliable, connected, and sustainable healthcare infrastructure. This is more than power: It is dignity, trust, and the freedom to thrive.
What impact are you hoping to achieve?
The future of healthcare infrastructure in Africa lies in combining decentralized and centralized systems. With the world’s fastest growing population, now over 1.2 billion people and rising rapidly, closing today’s gaps is urgent. By building hybrid infrastructure, we can deliver solar powered oxygen, cold chain, and vital energy while also ensuring hospitals are connected to the internet and the cloud. We are not simply bringing power, we are creating reliable, digital-ready healthcare systems. By making energy a commodity rather than a constant concern, providers are freed from the stress of outages, allowing them to focus fully on care, while patients gain confidence in access to 24/7 reliable treatment. Each megawatt of solar we install offsets 2 million tons of CO₂ annually. This is critical, as respiratory diseases linked to CO₂ emissions remain one of the leading causes of child mortality worldwide.
What’s the hardest part about building?
We operate in some of the world’s toughest conditions. Hundreds of kilometers from the nearest city, far beyond electric grids, in places that can take 20 hours by road to reach. We carry our own fuel in cars with double tanks because there are no gas stations. Delivering containers of equipment can take more than a week in the dry season. Bridges collapse. Transporters spend days stuck in their trucks. The Harmattan wind corrodes unprotected metal. Every piece of equipment, from a drill to a concrete mixer, must be expected to fail because replacing it can take over 72 hours. Security risks are constant. You can expect operational failure at every step of the way and yet to get power the tolerance for error is zero. Building energy systems here is like launching a rocket. You either succeed and power flows, or you fail. And failure is not an option. Leaving thousands of people without access to healthcare because of failed energy is simply unimaginable.
Have you always been involved in climate?
I transitioned to this work in 2020, after beginning my career in computer forensics where I developed frameworks to detect outliers in financial transactions. I then built a forensics and data analytics practice, serving clients such as the Belgian government and one of the world’s leading insurance groups. Alongside this, I was deeply involved in philanthropic work in Africa, teaching university students in the Democratic Republic of Congo how to program in my free time. The challenges of infrastructure were a daily reality, as power cuts frequently shut down our computer labs and rebooted machines without backup batteries.
What’s the craziest or most unexpected situation you've experienced as a founder?
We were once stuck on the road for more than four hours, our truck held in place by deep mud. Just a few feet away, in the back of a car, a woman went into labor. She could not wait to reach the hospital. Chaos erupted as the only person with medical knowledge tried to keep well-meaning helpers away, knowing poor sanitation could endanger both mother and child. For two long hours we waited as she fought through the pain with incredible strength. At last, the baby was born. The mother and newborn were lifted onto a motorcycle and rushed to the hospital before we could even move. The resilience she showed in that moment was nothing short of extraordinary.
What’s been one of the coolest moments you've had?
Seeing the pride of the men and the women who worked tirelessly on our latest large installation at an off-grid hospital in Liberia. Connecting the solar panel farm to the hospital and seeing the lights go on is like experiencing magic: You know there is a science to if but it is still fascinating each time. To see them experience that, as a result of their own work, was awesome.
What lesson have you learned?
Focus on innovating when it's necessary. It is a marathon: If something already exists, use it or improve it, unless you are really convinced you can reinvent it and make it orders of magnitude better. Otherwise save that energy for when that need arises. And if it does come, do not hesitate and go all-in on disrupting the status quo.
What's next for Winko?
We have just started work on delivering cold chain the the Sickle Cell Clinic of the Mulago Hospital in Kampala, Uganda, in collaboration with Direct Relief and the Texas Children's Hospital.
