IEEE Smart Village Is Helping to Electrify Rural Cameroon

More than 30 years ago, in the mountain village of Mbem in northwest Cameroon, the moon and stars in the night sky were the only light young Jude Numfor knew after the sunset. Electricity had not yet reached his rural community. “There was one person in the village with a petrol generator and a small television,” Numfor says. “When he turned it on, all the children would run to his house and peep through the window.” That memory became the spark for Numfor’s mission: to bring electricity to rural communities like his hometown. To accomplish his goal, in 2006 he cofounded Wireless Light and Power, since renamed Renewable Energy Innovators Cameroon, and he serves as its CEO. REI Cameroon designs, installs, and maintains solar minigrids for rural electrification. The minigrids use photovoltaic technology and battery-energy storage systems to generate electricity at 50 hertz. The electricity is distributed through smart meters. In 2017 the company received a grant from IEEE Smart Village to fund the expansion of REI’s minigrid operations and refine its business model. Smart Village supports projects and organizations bringing electricity and educational and employment opportunities to remote communities worldwide. The program is supported by IEEE societies and donations to the IEEE Foundation. The partnership has led to a collaboration developing open source metering, a free, community-driven way of tracking energy usage. Unlike proprietary utility meters, the system allows users, researchers, and utilities to view, customize, and verify how data is collected, ensuring transparency in billing, consumption tracking, and grid management. Smart Village’s support has been pivotal, Numfor says: “It’s not just about money. We share ideas, we get advice, and we have made friends. Entrepreneurship is lonely, but with the [Smart Village] community, it is different.” From teenage tinkerer to entrepreneur Numfor’s first experience of life with electricity was in 2001, after moving in with a missionary family in the small village of Allat. They used solar panels to power their whole home—an unimaginable luxury in Mbem. “I could watch TV, eat ice cream, and turn on lights,” he says. “It made me wish my brothers in Mbem had the same opportunity.” Numfor’s curiosity about electricity was ignited when a motion-sensor solar light in the family’s home stopped working. He tinkered with the device to find out why. “My missionary family told me to play with it like a toy,” he says, laughingly. “I replaced the dead battery with a motorcycle battery and was able to bring the power back for the night.” Jude Numfor [right] testing a rechargeable solar lantern, which aimed to replace hazardous kerosene lamps—known locally as “bush lamps.”REI Cameroon His missionary parents encouraged Numfor to study technology and engineering on his own, as none of the country’s universities offered solar energy educational programs at the time. They built him a library and stocked it with books on engineering, management, and entrepreneurship. In 2006, armed with his new knowledge, Numfor launched Wireless Light and Power with a friend, Ludwig Teichgraber. The nonprofit aimed to replace hazardous kerosene lamps—known locally as “bush lamps”—with rechargeable solar lanterns. These solar lanterns—called “light packs”—were built locally by Numfor and a team of 11 young Cameroonians using PVC pipes, nickel-metal hydride batteries, and LED bulbs. Families rented the lamps for a small fee, swapping discharged lamps for fully charged ones at solar-powered charging kiosks when they ran out of power. The kiosks then recharged the depleted lamps, making them available for the next swap. “The solar lantern was safer and cleaner, plus it gave children a chance to read at night,” Numfor explains. “People loved them.” Between 2006 and 2010, his team replicated the model across several villages. But when the global financial crisis hit in 2008, donor support dwindled, forcing the organization to evolve. “We pivoted from being an NGO to a commercial venture,” he says. “That’s how REI was born.” Building solar minigrids to serve community needs The new company’s goal was to move away from the lanterns and toward full electrification of communities. Villagers’ aspirations changed, Numfor says, as they now wanted to power their TVs, music systems, and mobile phones. In response, in 2010, REI developed one of the first solar minigrids in West Africa. Using locally procured components, the prototype supplied steady power to six households. The minigrid system used 12 123-watt solar photovoltaic panels manufactured by Sharp, 16 12-volt 100 ampere-hour automatic gain control lead acid batteries, and a Xantrex charge controller and inverter. Locally sourced wooden light poles were erected to distribute electricity throughout the village. REI charged each household a fee for the electricity. “It was a product-market-fit moment,” Numfor says. “People immediately asked, ‘When can we get this, too?’” The word-of-mouth, grassroots growth caught the attention of global partners. Numfor connected with Smart Village and in 2017, REI Cameroon received its first seed grant from the program. With that funding, Numfor was able to grow organically and attract additional grants, including one from the U.S. Trade Development Agency (USTDA), in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory. REI has since expanded to six villages, providing power to more than 1,000 households and businesses. With a dedicated team of 16 people, the company operates in multiple regions of the country, each with unique terrain, languages, and cultural dynamics. “It wasn’t easy,” he acknowledges. “I’m not an academic person—I had to learn everything by doing. [Smart Village] helped me structure the project and grow as an entrepreneur.” Today, Numfor pays it forward by sharing his Smart Village experience and mentoring new entrepreneurs. Launching a coalition for smart metering Minigrids can’t operate efficiently without clarifying operating rules to ensure quality service requirements and consumer protection, while also enabling reliable and effective monitoring of the system, Numfor says. “We need to know how power is being used, detect problems early, and manage the minigrid from a distance,” he explains. Existing commercial smart-meter providers offer limited and proprietary solutions. One major provider left the market, making their technology infrastructure obsolete. “It’s risky for an entire sector to depend on a few companies for such a critical technology,” Numfor says. In 2025, with the help of the Smart Village technical community, Numfor convened a consortium of open-source power advocates, including the Africa Mini-Grid Developers Association, EnAccess, Energy IOT, and NESL. The goal was to develop an open smart metering system that is accessible, transparent, and sustainable for all energy providers. “These organizations are collaborating as Open Advanced Metering Infrastructure [OpenAMI], which is about giving control back to the people who deliver the energy,” he says. Scaling for impact Numfor’s passion has grown from bringing light to local rural communities to bringing light to his entire country. Just 54 percent of Cameroon’s citizens have access to electricity, according to the International Energy Agency. For Numfor, the challenge is not just technological—it’s social and economic as well. “Electricity is the most important enabler of education and economic growth today,” he says. “When you have power, you unlock everything else.” “Electricity changed my life. Now I want to make sure every child can grow up with that same light.” —Jude Numfor Across the villages where REI has installed sustainable electricity solutions, small businesses are flourishing. Barbershops hum with community chatter, food vendors can preserve perishables, and entrepreneurs run companies such as phone-charging stations and small mills. “Some villages even have laundromats now,” Numfor says proudly. “Electricity creates jobs and changes mindsets.” Still, it has been a bumpy journey. It wasn’t until 2025 that REI obtained its official authorization (license) from Cameroon’s government to produce and distribute electricity in off-grid areas using solar minigrids. This was a major milestone because REI is one of the first private enterprises in the country to receive such authorization. “We were stuck between pilot projects and growth,” he explains. “Our projects were successful, and there was community demand for more, but to grow, we needed investors who require legal guarantees before committing funds. Now we can scale up and attract investors.” REI plans to expand its reach dramatically, beginning with 134 new villages identified through a feasibility study supported by the USTDA. Their long-term goal is to electrify 760 villages across Cameroon by 2031. While authorization opens doors, financing remains one of REI’s biggest challenges. “The minigrid space doesn’t attract venture capitalists easily,” Numfor notes. “Our return on investment is under 15 percent, so it’s not a typical tech startup model. The real return here is the impact” on the community. He hopes to attract investors who understand that access to electricity drives education, health care, and entrepreneurship. “There are people out there who want to make meaningful change,” he says. “We just need to connect with them. When you electrify a village, you never know who the next innovator will be. Maybe it’s another kid like me, looking through a window, dreaming.” Finding skilled staff is another challenge, Numfor says. To address this, REI developed an intensive recruitment and training process. “It used to take years to find the right people,” he says. “Now, we can identify who fits our company culture within six months.” Numfor’s wife, Angela Taliklong, who joined the venture in 2010, now oversees administration and human resources. A brighter Cameroon and beyond Numfor offers simple words of advice to other impact-driven entrepreneurs: Keep moving. “One of my mistakes early on was trying to be perfect,” he says. “I was spending time improving prototypes instead of increasing the number of our project installations and scaling how many communities we could electrify. You must keep momentum. Don’t wait until everything is perfect before you move forward.” That mindset, rooted in resilience and experimentation, has defined his journey. Rajan Kapur, president of Smart Village, says Numfor is a “shining example” of the program’s vision: “scalable and enduring impact through local entrepreneurs, local procurement, and community engagement based on the use of IEEE technology in underserved communities.” With the ongoing Smart Village partnership, Numfor is determined to bring light and opportunity to every corner of Cameroon, and beyond. He already has launched REI Nigeria. “Electricity changed my life,” he says. “Now I want to make sure every child can grow up with that same light.” Natalie Zundel, founder of Raise Well in Ashburn, Va., consults and writes for associations and nonprofit organizations.