From Discarded Battery Cells to Clean Circular Energy Solutions: CEPREC meets with Afterlife Innovations

On Friday, 25th July 2025, the CEPREC team, led by Dr William Murithi, a senior faculty at Strathmore Business School and country lead for the CEPREC team in Kenya, had an inspiring meeting with AfterLife Innovations, a student-led startup from Strathmore University, and Bernard Muciu, a Master’s of Sustainable Energy Technology (MSET) at Strathmore University, who is researching battery storage. Also present in the meeting were Gladys Ombati, PhD student researching Business Models for Circular Microgrids, Andrew Adwera, a PhD student on Modelling of EV batteries for Circular Microgrids, and Sheila Chepkorir, the project assistant for CEPREC, Kenya.

The CEPREC team also consists of Prof Izael Da Silva, DVC Research and Innovation, and a Co-Investigator in the project, and Dr Churchill Saoke, Director of Strathmore Energy Resource Centre (SERC) and Co-investigator; they both bring expertise in Renewable Energy, and Dr Peter Kimani, a chemical engineer based at the University of Nairobi. Additionally, Ignatius Maranga, a

What began as an introductory session evolved into a deep, action-oriented discussion on how we can collaborate to accelerate circular battery innovation.

AfterLife Innovations is doing remarkable work — recycling disposed lithium-ion batteries and repurposing their cells into functional power banks. Originally, they began as a competition team; however, they’ve grown into startups driven by a vision to accelerate sustainability, accessibility, and scalability. What stood out was how these undergraduate students — mostly from engineering and IT — have rolled up their sleeves to turn ideas into practical solutions.

Dr. William Murithi, the Kenya lead for CEPREC, challenged the AfterLife team to develop a basic prototype of an electric vehicle (EV) using recycled materials, to be showcased at our stakeholder meeting in Kenya next year. The CEPREC initiative is designed to bridge academia with industry and policy makers, linking practical design with circular innovation. We will use this platform to also spotlight student-led solutions, starting with AfterLife.

As CEPREC, we will provide research, technical guidance and ecosystem support to AfterLife Innovations— including connections to local and global researchers, industrial partners, and knowledge exchange platforms within our project network, and beyond. CEPREC has a global outlook, with partners in the UK, and pan-African collaborators including Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Siera Leon, and South Africa. The team has 26 academics and 15 PhDs and postdoctoral researchers spread across 11 institutions in the partner countries (read more https://www.ceprec.co/ ).

This collaboration strengthens CEPREC’s vision of accelerating local capacity, circular innovation, and inclusive partnerships. It creates powerful synergy between emerging student-driven innovation and formal academic research.

We are excited to see how AfterLife’s concepts evolve and look forward to co-creating a more circular, community-driven energy future.

CEPREC is committed to fostering multisectoral, interdisciplinary collaboration among government, industry, and academia to drive cutting-edge knowledge, innovation, and skills for Africa’s energy transition.

Article written by Dr William Murithi and Sheila Chepkorir