This program establishes :
– Three independent multi-product micro-utilities in Cameroon providing lighting for more than 6,000 bulbs alongside powering other energy related businesses. This will serve more than 22500 people in the six targeted villages and neighboring villages.
This will serve as a precursor for deployment of internet communication facilities and the enhancement of education in these impoverished off-grid communities.
– Three Independent Mobile Power Plants for Agriculture (MPPAs) for powering DC solar pumps and other mini food processing machinery (grain crushers, oil mills etc.) in the off-grid communities. This will go a long way to improve agricultural production and productivity especially in off season market gardening, hence improving income streams for rural women, fighting hunger and reducing human drudgery.
– This program will serve as a learning-by-doing environment for the Smart Village Energy Entrepreneurs trainees of the Renewable energy department of Torchbearer Foundation. The training of Smart Village Entrepreneurs (SVE) and Smart Village Technicians (SVT) is already ongoing and diversifying mode of energy deployment into the villages as well as
identifying business opportunity will serve as a booster to this training.
Each micro-utility will have at its disposal the ability to provide village-centric power to about 100 metered customers. Self-sustaining from the start, able to cover its own maintenance, operations and overhead, full amortization of the direct hardware startup capital is estimated at 5 years for the Mobile power plants for Agriculture and 6 years for the village micro grid. The micro-utilities are locally owned and operated by the on-site operating teams under a franchise agreement with the Smart Village Entrepreneur (SVE) and NGO partner, Igniting Africa. Igniting Africa provides the hardware (as funded by this grant), technical and operational supervision and execution, through the Smart Village Entrepreneurs of Igniting
Africa’s Renewable Energy Enterprise Department as well as financial oversight of the program will engage the services of its trainees (mentees) under the supervision of Smart Village Energy Entrepreneurs of Igniting Africa. We envisage an ambitious schedule of hardware acquisition in the next few months that will allow deployment in six off-grid villages in Cameroon in the first half of 2017. This will contribute to the extension of renewable energytechnologies in the rural communities and will enhance learning to school children as they can study at night (creation of community reading centers), reduce human drudgery (MPPAs for grain crushing, water pumping etc.) especially on women and the girls as well as promote girl child education.
Additionally, we will couple solar energy with agriculture, education and training, micro finance, food processing plants and other humanitarian projects that have economic, spiritual, physical, social, cultural, civic, political and educational impact in the community. This will reduce migration of villagers to the cities in the search of opportunities. Consequently, this will mark a new era in the reduction of urbanization.