RenewTech Cam: The Woman Building Solar Refrigeration Solutions for Cameroon’s Energy and Healthcare Gaps
For a rural health facility, losing electricity can mean more than an interruption to daily operations.
It can mean losing the ability to safely store vaccines. For food businesses, it can mean spoiled products and lost income.
That is the problem Mbanwie Praises Echick, founder of RenewTech Cam, is trying to address with solar-powered refrigeration.
The entrepreneur is one of the women-led green businesses highlighted from Cameroon’s 2025 cohort of the Investing in Young Businesses in Africa – Women Entrepreneurship for Africa (IYBA WE4A) programme, implemented by GIZ and its partners.
RenewTech Cam is developing solar-powered refrigerators designed for applications including food preservation and vaccine storage, according to the company profile shared through the programme.
The idea sits at the intersection of two problems Cameroon continues to face: access to reliable electricity and the cost of maintaining cold-chain infrastructure outside major urban centres.
Why refrigeration is an energy problem
Electricity access in Cameroon has improved, but the gap between urban and rural communities remains substantial.
The World Bank reported in January 2025 that around 75% of people living in rural Cameroon still lacked access to electricity, compared with national access of about 71% at the time. The institution also highlighted electricity's importance for healthcare facilities, cold chains and small businesses.
That makes refrigeration particularly difficult in communities that cannot depend on a stable grid connection.
A refrigerator needs continuous power. A health facility cannot simply switch it off when electricity becomes unavailable and expect temperature-sensitive vaccines to remain safe indefinitely.
The same applies to food producers and traders whose products depend on refrigeration.
Solar-powered systems offer one way of separating essential refrigeration from the limitations of the conventional grid.
The World Health Organization notes that solar refrigeration can be particularly useful where conventional electricity is unavailable or unreliable, provided the systems meet appropriate technical standards and are properly installed and maintained.
Cameroon already has a large need for solar cold-chain equipment
The market need is not theoretical.
In February 2026, Cameroon’s Ministry of Public Health received 823 solar refrigerators for the country's vaccination programme. The equipment was valued at approximately US$7 million, or CFAF4.2 billion, including CFAF826 million contributed by the Cameroonian government.
According to MINSANTE, the deployment was expected to increase the share of health facilities with approved cold-chain equipment from 47% to 82%.
The equipment is part of a broader logistics effort that also included refrigerated vehicles, motorcycles for reaching difficult areas and digital equipment for the Expanded Programme on Immunization.
The scale of that procurement illustrates the size of the problem businesses like RenewTech Cam are entering.
Cameroon needs refrigeration not only in large hospitals and urban facilities, but also in health centres and communities where grid electricity is less dependable.
There is a business opportunity behind the public-health problem
The cold chain is an infrastructure business as much as it is a healthcare issue.
Vaccines have to be stored at controlled temperatures. Food producers need to prevent spoilage. Pharmacies may require temperature-controlled storage. Farmers and agricultural businesses increasingly need cold storage to preserve products after harvest.
A reliable refrigeration solution can therefore serve several markets.
For a company such as RenewTech Cam, the opportunity is not simply selling a refrigerator.
It is potentially providing an energy-independent cold-storage solution to customers who cannot always rely on the grid.
That could include:
Rural health facilities
Pharmacies and medical suppliers
Food processors
Farmers and agricultural cooperatives
Food retailers
Small hospitality businesses
Community-based enterprises
The commercial model, however, will matter just as much as the technology.
Customers need equipment they can afford, maintain and repair locally.
From an idea to a business
Praises says the IYBA WE4A coaching helped her move RenewTech Cam from an idea that needed development into a business that could be presented more clearly to potential partners and investors.
In her account of the programme, she said the coaching gave her greater clarity in presenting the company in a way that could attract global support.
She also highlighted the circular-economy training as particularly useful in understanding how to apply sustainability principles directly to RenewTech Cam’s solar-energy solutions.
That business-development component is important.
Green technology companies often face a challenge that goes beyond developing the product itself. They also need to explain the economics of the solution to customers, investors and financing institutions.
A technically useful product still needs a viable business model.
What IYBA WE4A is trying to change
RenewTech Cam's story also shows why programmes such as IYBA WE4A focus on more than grants.
The initiative is designed to support women-led start-ups and MSMEs working in sectors contributing to Africa's green transition.
In Cameroon, the programme works with MINPMEESA and other ecosystem partners to provide women entrepreneurs with business skills, networking, technical support and access to financing opportunities. The Cameroon programme says it aims to strengthen the skills of more than 500 women entrepreneurs leading or co-owning businesses in its target sectors.
At the continental level, IYBA WE4A is a €41.4 million programme running from 2024 to 2027 across eight African countries, including Cameroon. Its partners include GIZ, the European Union, the Tony Elumelu Foundation, Goodwell Investments and Investisseurs & Partenaires.
The programme combines entrepreneurship training, investment-readiness support, financing and business networks.
For early-stage companies, those connections can be as important as the initial capital.
Women entrepreneurs are entering Cameroon’s green economy
RenewTech Cam is one example of a broader shift towards women-led businesses operating in areas traditionally associated with technical infrastructure and industrial development.
The IYBA WE4A programme covers sectors including renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, circular economy, ecotourism and other green businesses.
In its 2024–2025 Cameroon cohort, the programme reported 501 women entrepreneurs enrolled, 323 completing the programme, 108 receiving seed capital and 159 MSMEs strengthening their business capacities. The programme also reported 593 additional decent jobs created during that period.
That makes the programme relevant to the wider SME economy, rather than simply a women’s entrepreneurship initiative.
If more women-led businesses can move from early-stage ideas into formal companies with customers, employees and financing, the impact extends beyond the founders themselves.
The hard part comes after the programme
For RenewTech Cam, the next challenge is scaling.
Solar refrigeration has a clear use case in Cameroon, but turning that opportunity into a sustainable business will require more than technical capability.
The company will need to answer practical questions around manufacturing or sourcing, installation, after-sales service, spare parts, financing and customer acquisition.
Maintenance may be particularly important.
Solar refrigeration systems operate in environments where technical support may be far away. If a system serving a rural clinic breaks down and the nearest qualified technician is hundreds of kilometres away, the original investment can quickly lose its value.
That means local technical capacity could become part of the business opportunity itself.
Training technicians, maintaining spare-parts networks and providing monitoring services could all become important components of a scalable model.
A market larger than healthcare
Healthcare may provide one of the clearest applications, but RenewTech Cam's potential market is broader.
Cameroon's agricultural sector also faces significant post-harvest losses and limited cold-storage capacity.
For small producers, refrigeration can determine whether perishable products reach consumers in good condition or are sold quickly at lower prices.
A solar-powered cold-storage solution could therefore connect renewable energy with agriculture, food processing and rural enterprise.
The same infrastructure could potentially support small businesses operating in areas where grid electricity remains unreliable.
This is where the commercial value of green technology becomes clearer.
The solution is not simply “solar.”
It is reliable productive infrastructure powered by solar energy.
What will determine RenewTech Cam’s growth?
The company is entering a market with a genuine need, but that does not automatically guarantee commercial success.
Several factors will matter:
Affordability: Rural customers and small businesses may need financing or leasing models rather than large upfront payments.
Reliability: The equipment must perform consistently in real-world conditions.
Maintenance: Local technicians and accessible spare parts will be critical.
Institutional customers: Partnerships with health organisations, agricultural programmes and other large buyers could accelerate adoption.
Local production: Increasing local assembly or manufacturing could eventually reduce dependence on imported equipment and create additional jobs.
Proof of impact: Demonstrating how much food is preserved, how many vaccines can be safely stored or how much diesel consumption is avoided could help the company attract commercial and development partners.
Final Thoughts
RenewTech Cam is working in a space where Cameroon has a clear infrastructure need: keeping essential products cold in places where electricity cannot always be taken for granted.
The timing is also interesting.
The government and development partners are already investing heavily in solar cold-chain equipment for the national vaccination system, while rural communities continue to face significant electricity-access challenges.
For Praises Echick and RenewTech Cam, the opportunity is to turn that need into a commercially sustainable business.
Whether the company ultimately grows into a major supplier or remains a specialised SME, its model points to a larger opportunity in Cameroon: using renewable energy to solve everyday infrastructure problems that businesses and communities cannot afford to ignore.
And that is where green entrepreneurship becomes more than an environmental conversation. It becomes a business proposition.
Cameroon Business Review will continue to follow the entrepreneurs and companies building solutions around Cameroon’s energy, healthcare and green-economy challenges.
