Café Lumière is an innovative, sustainable solar solution specially designed for electrifying isolated rural areas, in response to the needs of collective, productive and individual services.
Fundamental principles of a Café Lumière
The fundamental principles of the Café Lumière solution are as follows:
- Guarantee access to an essential and sustainable electricity service for all members of a rural community, whatever their status, function or role in the community, and taking into account their financial means (for example by offering solar lamps or solar home systems to some).
- Improve the quality of community services (in particular those dedicated to health and education) by ensuring sustainable minimum access to electricity, financed by a contribution on sales of electricity and services paid by households and businesses.
- Contribute to the development of private productive activities (agri-food processing, crafts, cold production, water pumping, etc.), by providing sustainable access to affordable electricity and building the capacity of players (technical, improving or accessing new skills, organisation and management of work, resources, basic economic calculations, market/customer access, etc.).
- To help establish a political and regulatory framework that will enable local players to manage and maintain the Café Lumière facilities and service on a long-term basis.
The Café Lumière solution aims to offer a continuum of solutions to users (services, local connections for productive players and community services) and to build the capacity of local players, whether they be public services, private operators (delegated companies and productive players) or civil society organisations.
What is a Café Lumière?
The Café Lumière is an off-grid electrification solution for isolated rural areas.
In practical terms, a Café Lumière takes the form of a mini photovoltaic power station that converts solar energy into electrical energy. A technical room houses the control equipment, the converter and the storage batteries. A back-up generator completes the equipment, to ensure continuity of service.
A “Café Lumière” building provides electrical services for the general public: lamp and telephone recharging, multi-services, refrigeration and storage, etc.
A mini-grid supplies electricity to a group of buildings and provides street lighting.
This group of buildings, served by the mini-grid, includes community service buildings (health centres, schools, town halls, etc.), income-generating activities (rice husking workshops, craft activities, etc.) and the homes of households that have asked to be connected to the mini-grid.
Placed under the responsibility of the local authorities, the Café Lumière facility is managed by a delegate who ensures its financial equilibrium and therefore its sustainability.
What impact will this have?
The aim of this model is to contribute to extending access to sustainable energy for isolated populations and to encourage the development of the local economic fabric and community services.
The origin of the solution
“Throughout its history, Electriciens sans frontières has focused primarily on essential services: access to water and electricity for schools and health centres in isolated rural areas.
The Café Lumière concept marked a breakthrough. It took shape in 2013 in Madagascar, where a number of projects were the first steps towards answering the question: why not cover all the electricity needs of a village in a single approach? Why not combine community services, economic activities and domestic needs? Café Lumière was born.
Compared with the mini grid projects run by most private or institutional operators, Café Lumière also marks a break with the past: a range of services accessible to all, technical solutions and commercial arrangements enabling entrepreneurs to develop thanks to electricity, and a shared contribution to supplying schools, health centres and public lighting.
Today, the Cafés Lumière have a dual ambition: to create the conditions for sustainable economic development by improving the living conditions of disadvantaged communities through access to modern energy services at an affordable cost. So that the poorest people are not left by the wayside.”
Jean-Pierre Cerdan, Secretary General of Electriciens sans frontières
The Café Lumière programme
Completion dates: 2022 – 2025
With a rate of access to electricity in rural areas of 18% in Benin, 11% in Madagascar and 25% in Togo, there are almost 25 million people in these 3 countries, the vast majority of them vulnerable, who are not connected to the electricity network.
The Café Lumière programme aims to create and empower local off-grid energy access networks through clean, innovative, autonomous, sustainable and low-cost rural electrification.
It includes capacity-building for local players and the construction of “Café Lumière” in 22 rural villages in Benin, Madagascar and Togo:
– 6 villages in Madagascar are already benefiting from the Café Lumière solution (pilot project) and four are currently being deployed in 4 villages in Benin.
– 12 new villages: 2 in Benin, 4 in Madagascar and 6 in Togo, will be involved in setting up new Cafés Lumière as part of the programme.
Café Lumière contributes to economic and social development, and to improving living conditions in rural communities.
The programme benefits from major support from the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) via the I-OSC NGO support scheme.
Objectives
The aim of the Café Lumière programme is to help improve the living conditions of rural communities in Benin, Madagascar and Togo that have been cut off from the electricity grid for a long time, by providing sustainable access to modern electricity services based on renewable energy, and more specifically :
– Supporting the structuring of local networks capable of autonomously deploying the Café Lumière solution, made up of public players, private players and civil society.
– Provide 22 rural villages with access to modern, efficient, clean and sustainable energy services, enabling the creation and development of viable economic activities and improving people’s living conditions through the provision of domestic services and the electrification of utilities.
A large number of partners and sponsors have supported the Café Lumière solution since its inception: local partners, public and private players, French and international sponsors, etc.
Partners and players
Sonagnon is a village development association set up in Benin in 1998, with the aim of improving the living and working conditions of the lake-dwelling population in the commune of So-Ava, through the development of economic activities and helping people gain access to micro-credit.
Entreprises, Territoires et Développement (ETD) is a Togolese NGO set up in 2003. It defines and implements development programmes that contribute to the equitable creation of wealth between stakeholders in the sectors of agriculture, local governance, natural resource management and the environment.
Soa Afafy Hampahomby ny ho Avy (SAHA) is a Malagasy non-profit, non-governmental public interest organisation founded in April 2011 that works to structure a well-governed, economically developed, fairer and more equitable society.
ALAFIA is a Togolese NGO, directed and managed exclusively by women, founded in 1997, which aims to promote and develop women.
Haingo Randrianarivony, former Director General of the NGO in Madagascar, is an international consultant specialising in evaluation, capitalisation, impact studies and sector/value chain studies on entrepreneurship, natural resource management and access, vocational training and civil society.
The Foundation for International Development Studies and Research (FERDI), which is recognised as a public utility, was created in 2003. Its aim is to promote understanding of international economic development and the factors that influence it, through a research laboratory.
Songhaï is a Beninese NGO founded in 1985 that contributes to development through the creation of green rural towns (viable socio-economic development) with the practice of integrated agriculture made possible by capacity-building for the players involved.
CIDR-Pamiga is a French international solidarity NGO created by the merger in 2019 between CIDR (founded in 1961) and Pamiga (founded in 2005), specialising in microfinance.
ANKA Madagascar is a Madagascan company specialising in the development and supply of solar solutions for rural and isolated communities, individuals and industry.
ARESS is a Benin-based company that has been developing certified solutions for residential and professional use in both urban and rural areas since 2012.
The Rural Electrification Agencies (ABERME in Benin, ADER in Madagascar and AT2ER in Togo) play a central role in the implementation and sustainability of the programme. They help to anchor the programme in the regulations and the off-grid rural electrification plan, select the villages and give their approval to the selected contractors.
Financial partners
Other Cafés Lumière partner companies: Kinect Energy, IEEE, Prysmian Group, Signify, Monabee, Sicame