Madagascar has an extremely low electricity access rate of about 5% in rural areas. This means around 15 million inhabitants (out of a general population of 25 millions) live without access to electricity. This not only hinders their economic development and business productivity but also their human development (comfort of life, health conditions, education).

The Café Lumière project targets rural populations in Madagascar forgotten by electrification strategies. It starts from several observations:

• The low standard of living and isolated living conditions of these populations make access to the electricity network difficult and costly. They only have access to inefficient and dangerous lighting solutions for their health (oil, candles), or for the wealthiest households, expensive individual electrification from solar systems or generator set type.
• These solutions do not meet productive needs.
• In addition, there has been a relative failure of the electrification projects of public services (school, health center) for two decades, due to the difficulty of mobilizing and financing resources over the long term to ensure the maintenance of the systems.

The solution is a public private partnership between a French NGO (Electriciens sans frontières), a local private operator (EOSOL/ANKA), the Malagasy agency for rural electrification (ADER), a research foundation (FERDI) and a monitoring company (Monabee).

1. The Café Lumière shop, located at the center of the village and from which a number of energy services are made available to the inhabitants by a local private operator: from solar lamps leasing, cell phone charging, up to SHS, and services such as printing and copy.
2. A mini-power station, producing energy through a mix: solar energy captured by solar PV panels on the roof during the day, stocked in high capacity batteries, in addition to a diesel power generator located close by.
3. An aerial mini-grid powering neighboring households, public buildings (schools, city hall, health center), streetlights.
4. Productive units (rice hullers and other light manufacturing activities such as tool welding).