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Hannah Yeoh: Food courts, hawker stalls and markets in Putrajaya to see rental rates reduced
PUTRAJAYA, May 25 — Putrajaya Corporation (PPj) has announced a 30 per cent reduction in monthly rental rates for...
"STALLS" · 총 47건
필터 보기현재 지수
50.3
0 = 부정 우세
50 = 중립
100 = 긍정 우세
최근 7일 기준 86,364건을 분석한 결과, 뉴스 심리지수는 50.3(균형)입니다. 긍정 4,357건(5.0%)·중립 79,967건(92.6%)·부정 2,040건(2.4%)이며, 중립 비중이 뚜렷하게 높습니다. 성향 지수는 종합 14.9(중도 균형)입니다.
PUTRAJAYA, May 25 — Putrajaya Corporation (PPj) has announced a 30 per cent reduction in monthly rental rates for...
Business owners have posted tearful videos on social media, with another titling hers 'what a shambles. Giving a new meaning to "diddly squat"'.
In Lahore, food is never merely food. It is memory, migration, performance, class, longing and history carried on the tongue. Few places embody this truth more vividly than Gawalmandi, the dense and storied neighbourhood in central Lahore whose narrow streets, smoky grills, old facades and crowded eateries became inseparable from the cultural imagination of the city. To speak of Gawalmandi is to speak of Lahore itself: a city built through displacement, improvisation, coexistence and reinvention. Until recently, Gawalmandi has been celebrated primarily for its famous Food Street, for sizzling kebabs, fragrant hareesa, fried fish, doodh-jalebi and late-night crowds that gather under strings of lights. Yet reducing Gawalmandi to a culinary destination alone would flatten its layered historical significance. The neighbourhood is also a site through which one can understand urban modernity in South Asia, the social consequences of Partition, and the transformation of everyday life in postcolonial cities. Through the writings of historians and theorists such as Gyan Prakash, Ash Amin and Arjun Appadurai, Gawalmandi can be read not simply as a neighborhood but as an urban text — a space where memory, mobility, intimacy and commerce converge. The literary recollections of A. Hameed, Ahmad Shuja Pasha and Pran Neville further illuminate how Lahore’s cultural worlds were built through ordinary people, shared spaces and everyday encounters. The name “Gawalmandi” itself reveals much about its origins. Derived from the wordsgawala (milkman) andmandi (market), the locality emerged as one of the largest buffalo milk production and distribution hubs in Punjab. Before it became associated with restaurants and food culture, it was a working neighbourhood shaped by cattle, dairy trade and the rhythms of everyday commerce. The area developed substantially after 1911, during the late colonial period, when Lahore was expanding beyond the Walled City. Its roads — Nisbet Road, Chamberlain Road and McLeod Road — reflected the imprint of British colonial urban planning, while its architecture retained distinctly subcontinental sensibilities. Buildings such as the 19th century Bajaj House and the 1914 Amrit Dhara structure demonstrate this hybrid aesthetic: colonial facades adapted to local climate, craft traditions and social life. Unlike the grand imperial spaces of colonial Lahore, however, Gawalmandi evolved through dense habitation and informal economies. It was a neighbourhood of wrestlers, traders, craftsmen and working families. It possessed a rough vitality that distinguished it from elite colonial enclaves. Over time, it also became associated with the Gujjar community, many of whom trace their ancestry and social roots to the area. Yet the decisive transformation of Gawalmandi came after 1947. The Indian Partition altered Lahore irreversibly. Entire populations moved across borders in conditions of trauma and uncertainty. Muslims from Amritsar, Jalandhar and other cities migrated into Lahore, while many Hindu and Sikh residents departed. Gawalmandi became one of the first major post-Partition residential settlements outside the Walled City. The neighbourhood’s post-Partition story reflects what Gyan Prakash describes as the making of the “modern city” through rupture, improvisation and uneven urban experience. In Mumbai Fables, Prakash argues that South Asian cities are not merely planned spaces but are continuously produced through the aspirations and survival strategies of ordinary people. Gawalmandi embodies this process perfectly. Many of the migrants who settled there arrived with little capital but considerable skill. Craftsmen opened workshops in front of their homes. Small vendors transformed domestic thresholds into commercial spaces. Families carried recipes, techniques and food traditions from their ancestral cities and adapted them to the new urban environment. As local accounts suggest, the food stalls gradually multiplied until every lane offered something distinctive. The migrants from Amritsar popularised gram flour-coated fried fish that eventually became known throughout Lahore as “Lahore fish.” Kashmiri families introduced hareesa. Wrestler families brought specialised barbecue techniques and falooda traditions. Doodh-jalebi emerged as another iconic local specialty. Thus, it offered a perfect ambience for politician like Nawaz Sharif to spend his impressionable years at Gawalmandi which remained his political support base throughout. This culinary evolution was not accidental. It was a social response to displacement. Partition migrants reconstructed belonging through food. In doing so, they transformed Gawalmandi into a sensory archive of memory. Recipes became repositories of lost homes, vanished cities and inherited skills. Arjun Appadurai’s influential work on globalisation and everyday life helps illuminate this phenomenon. Appadurai argues that locality is not fixed geographically but is continually produced through social practice, memory and performance. Food, in this sense, is one of the most powerful ways communities reproduce identity. Gawalmandi’s cuisine thus became more than commerce. It became a way of rebuilding the self after historical rupture. One of the most striking aspects of Gawalmandi is the way public life unfolds in the street itself. The neighbourhood’s food culture depends on density, proximity and collective presence. Families eat outdoors late into the night. Vendors cook in open view. Children move through crowds. Strangers share tables. Ash Amin’s writings on “urban conviviality” are especially useful here. Amin argues that cities create forms of everyday coexistence that are not necessarily based on formal political unity but on repeated encounters, shared spaces and practical negotiation. Gawalmandi exemplifies such convivial urbanism. Historically, the area brought together Hindu, Sikh and Muslim communities. Even after Partition altered its demographic structure, the neighbourhood retained traces of plural cultural memory. The architecture, culinary practices and urban rhythms continued to carry echoes of mixed histories. This coexistence was not utopian. Like many dense urban neighbourhoods, Gawalmandi also experienced conflict, class tensions and political contestation. Yet its streets enabled forms of interaction rarely found in segregated modern urban developments. In contemporary Lahore, where gated communities increasingly dominate elite aspirations, Gawalmandi offers a radically different model of urban life. It remains noisy, porous, crowded and unpredictable. Its vitality depends precisely on this openness. The neighbourhood therefore challenges sanitised notions of urban modernity. For Gyan Prakash, South Asian cities are often marked by contradiction: aspiration exists alongside decay; modernity coexists with informality. Gawalmandi reflects these tensions vividly. It has long been described simultaneously as chaotic and authentic, deteriorating and alive. Much of its emotional resonance emerges through literary and nostalgic writing about Lahore. A. Hameed often portrayed Lahore not as a monumental city but as a lived emotional landscape built through tea houses, conversations, alleyways, smells and fleeting encounters. In his recollections, old Lahore possessed a human intimacy increasingly threatened by modern development. Gawalmandi belongs precisely to this disappearing urban sensibility. Similarly, Ahmad Shuja Pasha’s writings on Lahore captured the social texture of the city’s neighborhoods — the humour, eccentricity and performative culture of ordinary Lahoris. Pasha understood that Lahore’s identity resided less in official histories than in everyday public life. Gawalmandi’s crowded streets, wrestling culture, food traditions and neighbourhood politics all reflect this performative urban ethos. Pran Neville also provides crucial insight into the city’s cosmopolitan past. Neville repeatedly emphasised Lahore’s composite culture, where Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs participated in overlapping social worlds. Thus Gawalmandi is not merely a site of consumption. It is a repository of layered memory. Walking through Gawalmandi today reveals another dimension of its significance: its fragile architectural heritage. Many structures in the area still retain pre-Partition features — wooden balconies, carved facades, ornamental windows and mixed colonial-subcontinental designs. Yet these structures exist under immense pressure from commercialisation, neglect and unregulated development. The transformation of Gawalmandi into an official Food Street around 2000 reflected both preservation and commodification. Local activists, food enthusiasts and government authorities attempted to conserve historical structures while branding the area as a tourist destination. Residents were initially hesitant. The idea of converting everyday streets into curated cultural space was unfamiliar. Eventually, however, buildings were restored, commercial signage regulated and restaurants expanded into formerly residential spaces. The initiative gained international attention after visits by diplomats and foreign officials who viewed the street as evidence of Lahore’s cultural richness and public vibrancy. Yet heritage-making in South Asia is always political. In 2011, the Punjab government shut down the Food Street, arguing that it obstructed roads and created inconvenience. Historic gates associated with pre-Partition families were demolished. Thousands connected to the local food economy reportedly lost livelihoods. The closure revealed the uneasy relationship between bureaucracy and organic urban culture. (to be continued) Published in Dawn, May 24th, 2026
CM Maryam Nawaz visits Punjab Pavilion at World Urban Forum in Baku.—X/pmln_org LAHORE: Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif on Tuesday inaugurated the Punjab Pavilion at the World Urban Forum being held in Baku, Azerbaijan. During her visit to the Punjab Pavilion and various stalls set up at the Urban Expo, Director General of Punjab Housing and Town Planning Agency (Phata) Zeeshan Sikandar briefed the chief minister on the progress and achievements of the Apni Chhat, Apna Ghar programme, says a handout issued here on Tuesday. The CM claimed that Punjab’s flagship housing initiative, Apni Chhat, Apna Ghar, had secured a place among the top innovative projects of the world. She expressed pleasure over the international recognition of the initiative and reviewed affordable housing models and projects being implemented in other developing countries. Claims province’s flagship housing initiative has secured a place among world’s top innovative projects The chief minister took a live virtual tour of the housing scheme through interactive digital gadgets and watched a documentary portraying the construction journey and impact of the project on beneficiaries. She also interacted with staff at the Punjab Pavilion and appreciated their efforts in presenting Punjab’s development initiatives at the global forum. Speaking to foreign delegates and media representatives, Ms Nawaz highlighted the success of Punjab’s affordable urban housing programme, saying the initiative was very close to her heart and aimed at enabling deserving families to build homes through transparent and non-discriminatory loan distribution. She said that 600 to 700 houses were being constructed daily under the programme and more than 100,000 houses had been completed within one year. International delegates, foreign media representatives and guests attending the pavilion praised the chief minister’s vision and welfare-oriented policies after viewing the documentary featuring beneficiaries of the scheme. The Punjab Pavilion emerged as a major attraction at the World Urban Forum, while international media described the Punjab government’s swift implementation of the housing initiative as a model for other countries. Published in Dawn, May 20th, 2026
On Monday Iran said it had responded to the latest US proposal and that exchanges with Washington were continuing.
India’s top-heavy boom and the lesson for Bangladesh khairul.jahin@… Tue, 05/05/2026 - 11:54 Image India’s top-heavy boom and the lesson for Bangladesh During my 14 months as Minister (Press) at the Bangladesh High Commission in New Delhi, I observed India more from metro rails, trains, buses, provincial roads, and a daily dose of discussions with my colleagues in the diplomatic circle and journalistic peers from the Indian media. Personal travel and official work took me across Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh. I spent long hours reading newspapers, watching television, speaking with journalists, researchers, and policy professionals in Delhi, and observing how ordinary citizens moved through the economy. The impression was consistent. India possesses enormous capability, but it also carries a deep structural imbalance. It is a country of scale without enough spread and wealth without enough diffusion. And also a country with very large ambitions without sufficient economic architecture. The dominant global story is flattering. India is now the world’s fourth-largest economy, with output above $4 trillion. Growth has often ranged between 6% and 8%. Its stock market has surged. It landed a spacecraft near the Moon’s south pole. Its digital payments network is admired internationally. Western capitals increasingly view India as a democratic counterweight to China. None of this is false. But none of it is sufficient. Behind the aggregate numbers lies a more difficult truth. India’s growth model has become top-heavy. The central weakness is straightforward. India has generated elite wealth, urban enclaves of modern prosperity and globally competitive service industries. It has not generated enough broad middle-income employment. The country moved too quickly toward a service-led economy before completing industrialisation. In doing so, it skipped the stage that, elsewhere, historically created stable mass prosperity: labour-intensive manufacturing at scale. Every year, roughly 10-12 million young, educated Indians enter the workforce. That is comparable to adding a country the size of Belgium to the labour market annually. No nation can absorb such numbers through software parks, finance offices and high-end services alone. India has generated elite wealth, urban enclaves of modern prosperity and globally competitive service industries. It has not generated enough broad middle-income employment. The country moved too quickly toward a service-led economy before completing industrialisation. It needs factories, warehouses, construction supply chains, transport systems and medium-sized enterprises capable of hiring by the thousand. India’s economy has not produced enough of them. Official labour statistics and private estimates differ, but the broad picture is unmistakable. Youth unemployment remains high, especially in cities and among graduates. Urban youth unemployment has often been in the mid-to-high teens. In some regions, female youth unemployment has been dramatically higher. Yet even these figures understate the problem because India suffers heavily from disguised unemployment: several family members sharing work that would productively occupy one person. They are counted as employed, but they are not economically advancing. Stagnation in proper placement Nothing captures this scarcity better than recruitment frenzies for low-level public jobs. In 2022, Indian Railways announced around 35,000 vacancies. More than 12 million people reportedly applied—roughly one opening for every 357 applicants. When exam rules changed, protests erupted in Bihar and elsewhere. This was a classic labour-market distress. In Uttar Pradesh, more than 93,000 applicants reportedly sought 62 peon posts in 2024, many of them graduates, engineers and postgraduates. These are jobs involving basic clerical support, file movement and errands. When highly educated youth compete in such numbers for messenger-level work, GDP headlines become less persuasive. Families have paid for degrees, but the economy has not created matching opportunities. Economists call this jobless growth: rising output without sufficient employment creation. India has become one of its clearest large-scale examples. Capital-intensive sectors such as finance, telecoms, digital platforms, and automated manufacturing can rapidly boost GDP while adding relatively few jobs. Shareholders gain faster than workers. Historically, countries that lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty followed a different route. Britain, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and China all industrialised first. Rural labour moved into factories, productivity rose, exports expanded, and a mass middle class emerged. Vietnam is now following that path. Bangladesh has done so, in part, through garment exports. India was expected to do the same. It did not do enough of it. In 2014, the Indian government launched “Make in India”, promising to turn the country into a manufacturing hub. The ambition was to raise manufacturing’s share of GDP from around 16% to 25%. A decade later, manufacturing’s share remained well below target and by some measures slipped closer to 13%-14%. India did not merely miss the goal; it struggled to change direction. That is the heart of India’s missing middle. At the top sit giant conglomerates such as Reliance Industries, Adani Group and Tata Group. At the bottom sit millions of tiny workshops, traders and household enterprises employing five or fewer people. What is scarce are large mid-sized factories employing 500, 2,000 or 10,000 workers and linked to export supply chains. During the global “China Plus One” shift, multinationals seeking diversification did not move overwhelmingly to India. Many expanded in Vietnam, Mexico and Bangladesh. Vietnam, with a population under 100 million, has become a major exporter of electronics, footwear, leather accessories and apparel. Bangladesh, despite far fewer resources, built a garment export machine exceeding $45bn annually in recent years. India lost ground in precisely the labour-intensive sectors that could have employed millions: textiles, leather goods, footwear, toys and light engineering. The reasons are practical. Land acquisition can be slow and politically contentious. Power reliability varies by region. Ports and logistics have improved but remain more costly than those of best-in-class Asian competitors. Contract enforcement through courts can take years. Regulatory burdens remain dense. Medium firms often spend disproportionate time on compliance rather than expansion. An Observer Research Foundation study found more than 69,000 compliance requirements for doing business in India, with over 26,000 carrying imprisonment clauses. A mid-sized manufacturer can face hundreds of annual filings, inspections or procedural obligations. Under such conditions, staying small is often rational. That is the heart of India’s missing middle. At the top sit giant conglomerates such as Reliance Industries, Adani Group and Tata Group. At the bottom sit millions of tiny workshops, traders and household enterprises employing five or fewer people. What is scarce are large mid-sized factories employing 500, 2,000 or 10,000 workers and linked to export supply chains. Those firms built China’s middle class. They remain too few in India. Inequality at its peak Wealth concentration has widened the imbalance. According to the latest Forbes rankings, Mukesh Ambani remains India’s richest person with a net worth of about $97.9bn, while Gautam Adani follows with roughly $63.8bn. India now has 229 billionaires, up from 205 the previous year, and their combined wealth has crossed $1 trillion for the first time. The top ten richest Indians alone control around $368bn. On inequality, the broader picture remains stark. Estimates from the World Inequality Database and Oxfam indicate that the top 1% of Indians own around 40% of national wealth, while the bottom 50% own only around 3%. Exact percentages vary by methodology and year, but the trend in concentration is consistent. World Inequality Database and Oxfam indicate that the top 1% of Indians own around 40% of national wealth, while the bottom 50% own only around 3%. Exact percentages vary by methodology and year, but the trend in concentration is consistent. Consumption patterns reflect this divide. Mercedes-Benz India has posted record sales. Ultra-luxury apartments in Gurugram and Mumbai sell out quickly. Yet entry-level motorcycles, small tractors and low-cost fast-moving consumer goods have often seen sluggish rural demand. Companies have reported weak village sales volumes, meaning poorer households are cutting back not on luxuries but on staples and inexpensive treats. The service sector, long India’s pride, cannot fully offset these weaknesses. For three decades, IT services created one of India’s clearest success stories. Infosys, TCS and Wipro built global businesses on coding, consulting and back-office support. They created an urban middle class and reshaped cities such as Bengaluru and Hyderabad. But artificial intelligence now threatens some of the very entry-level tasks that sustained this model. Studies in advanced economies have found falling demand in occupations most exposed to generative AI. Hiring at major Indian IT firms has slowed sharply. Routine coding, customer service and standardised support work are increasingly automatable. India built much of its middle class by becoming the world’s back office. The back office is now changing. Agriculture remains another drag. Roughly 45%-50% of the workforce still depends on farming, while agriculture contributes around 15%-18% of GDP. Too many people compete for too small a share of national income. Holdings have fragmented across generations; a once-viable ten-acre farm may become several one-acre plots. Such land is hard to mechanise and often unprofitable. Debt cycles and price volatility intensify distress. India’s welfare architecture partly cushions these failures. The government provides free food grains to around 800 million people—close to 60% of the population. Ethically, such support is justified where hardship persists. Economically, it is also revealing. If growth were translating into secure incomes broadly enough, such dependence would be smaller. Despite growth, income inequality is rising in India. Visual: Star Education adds another fracture. India produces graduates at scale, but many employers report that graduates are poorly prepared. Some employability studies have claimed that a large majority of engineering graduates require substantial retraining. Polytechnic outcomes are also uneven. Students often gain credentials without marketable skills. Families borrow or liquidate assets to finance degrees that do not guarantee mobility. This creates what sociologists call waithood: young adults no longer students, not yet securely employed, waiting through repeated exams, coaching centres and temporary gigs. Across north India, tea stalls and rented rooms are full of candidates preparing for delayed government recruitment tests that may never transform their lives. Lessons for Bangladesh Bangladesh should study this carefully. Our own economy has grown strongly, averaging around 6% for much of the 2010s. Garment exports rose from roughly $12 billion in 2009 to above $45 billion in recent years. Around four million workers, mostly women, gained factory employment. Poverty fell sharply, life expectancy rose above 73 years, infant mortality declined, and female participation in paid work increased. Bangladesh benefited from precisely the labour-intensive manufacturing route India underused. Millions moved from subsistence dependence toward wage income, and that wage income financed schooling, rural housing, small businesses and consumption. Few policy choices in South Asia have produced a larger social return than integrating low-income women into export manufacturing. India has generated elite wealth, urban enclaves of modern prosperity and globally competitive service industries. It has not generated enough broad middle-income employment. The country moved too quickly toward a service-led economy before completing industrialisation. Yet Bangladesh also shows top-heavy tendencies. Garments account for around 80%-85% of merchandise exports, leaving the country vulnerable to recessions in Europe and North America, compliance shocks, buyer concentration and changes in global trade rules. A narrow export basket is profitable until demand turns. Banking-sector stress remains chronic, with high levels of non-performing and repeatedly rescheduled loans that weaken confidence and starve productive firms of credit. The tax-to-GDP ratio has often been below 9%, among the lowest in comparable emerging economies, limiting state capacity in health, education, transport and urban management. Dhaka property values have surged to levels comparable to those of many European and North American capitals, while many districts remain dependent on remittances, informal trade, and low-wage work. This is a classic sign of distorted capital allocation: money chasing land rather than machinery, skills or technology. Like India, Bangladesh has many microfirms and a few large groups, but too few medium industrial exporters outside garments. Pharmaceuticals are a bright spot, as are ceramics, footwear, bicycles, light engineering and shipbuilding niches, yet none has matched apparel at scale. The lesson is clear: Bangladesh now needs a second-generation growth model built on diversification. That means stronger ports, cheaper logistics, more reliable power, cleaner bank balance sheets, vocational training, deeper capital markets and easier scaling for medium enterprises. It also means moving up the garment value chain into design, branding, synthetic fabrics and technical textiles rather than relying mainly on basic cut-and-sew production. India still has formidable strengths, including a vast domestic market, entrepreneurial energy, English-language capabilities, digital infrastructure, and geopolitical relevance. It is not collapsing. But resilience is not a strategy. If jobless growth, weak manufacturing depth, educational mismatch and extreme inequality persist, the superpower narrative will remain incomplete. India has two decades before demographic ageing becomes more pronounced. That is the window to build factories, simplify regulations, improve the courts, upgrade skills, and widen opportunities. Without those reforms, India may grow larger without becoming broadly rich, more visible without becoming more balanced, and more powerful abroad while remaining brittle at home. Bangladesh also has a narrower window than many assume. The demographic dividend will not last indefinitely. Fertility has fallen sharply, the population is gradually ageing, and the economy will face rising pressure to create higher-productivity jobs before wage competitiveness erodes. That means the next fifteen to twenty years are critical. This is the period to diversify exports, reform banks, modernise tax administration, improve courts and contract enforcement, expand technical education, and make cities more liveable and productive. Without those reforms, Bangladesh may grow bigger (like India) without becoming significantly richer, urbanise without becoming efficient, and export more without developing real industrial depth. The country’s progress over the past two decades is substantial and real. But, as India’s example shows, growth alone does not guarantee balance, resilience or lasting prosperity. Faisal Mahmud is a Dhaka-based journalist. He was the former Minister (Press) of the Bangladesh High Commission in India. Send your articles for Slow Reads to slowreads@thedailystar.net. Check out our submission guidelines for details.
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.”