Do you have a cutting-edge product or service that aims to increase energy access, accelerate the energy transition, or enhance the operational efficiency of a leading national energy provider in Africa ?
The 2025 Digital Energy Challenge Partnership is calling for technology providers to submit an innovative digital project for a partnership with leading Senegalese energy provider Senelec.
The winning project will receive funding and support for the implementation of the project as part of Senelec’s rural electrification programme.
Discover the 2024 Bootcamp and the winning projects here.
Themes
Senelec, Senegal’s main energy supplier, has considerably increased its capacity over the last ten years, with renewable energies now accounting for 29% of its energy mix. The company’s efforts to improve the accessibility and resilience of the network have resulted in a significant increase in the customer base, which reached 2.19 million in 2022.
As part of the optimisation and digitalisation of its processes, Senelec is looking for innovative solutions to improve demand management, customer mapping, optimisation of network works and connections and project monitoring
The theme of the Partnership Challenge is Identification and real-time census of connections.
Candidates are invited to propose solutions tailored to the following needs (in six modules), while leaving room for manoeuvre in the methodological approaches and technologies used:
- Energy demand assessment (bottom-up approach)
- Customer geolocation and needs assessment
- Work optimisation
- Digital project monitoring
- Customer connection monitoring
- Interface with third-party applications
Candidates are free to propose a solution for each module, for a subset of modules or for all the needs identified.
For details of each module, see the Challenge rules in the Application Pack.
Who can apply?
The 2025 Digital Energy Challenge Partnership call for projects is open to innovative technology product/service providers who meet the following criteria:
- Are a national or international registered company
- Have less than 15 years existence and already developed an innovative solution to be tested with the Challenge
- Count more than 5 employees
- Generate an annual turnover of less than €50M
- Are able to interact in French with the project stakeholder Senelec
The technology provider may be a spin-off or subsidiary of a larger corporation/group and is not required to have existing activities in Senegal.
Benefits for Challenge winners
For the 2025 edition, the winning project partnership will benefit from:
- Financial support of up to €500K including: a grant to contribute to costs for equipment, software, products or services, training; technical assistance for project management support or strategic and technical expertise.
- A joint bootcamp run by cross-sectorial experts, to support project implementation, provide sectorial insights, foster synergies between project winners and encourage best-practice sharing.
- Widespread communication campaigns piloted by AFD during the selection phase, award ceremony, bootcamp and for a period of time after these events.
