In rural Senegal, many schools have neither electricity nor connectivity. The Ministry of National Education produces teaching videos, but classrooms have no way to play them.
TUMIQUI Power Digital Solutions (TPDS) is a SUCRECUBE Japon product that combines a fixed solar power installation with a communications antenna. Deployments are carried out with partners. It delivers more power to schools and public buildings than the portable TUMIQUI Smart Kit. Within the area the antenna covers, a high-speed local network works even when the outside internet connection is weak.
With Senegal’s Ministry of National Education
In October 2021, SUCRECUBE Japon signed a three-party memorandum of understanding with Senegal’s Ministry of National Education and the commune of Sandiara. In March 2022, TPDS was installed in five primary and lower secondary schools in Sandiara and at one connection point. The network worked at every site. Pupils could watch the Ministry’s teaching videos on a television in the classroom. In February 2024, the memorandum with the Ministry was extended.
Maintained on site
Power and a network only help teaching if they work every day. Installation and maintenance are carried out by the technicians of TUMIQUI JAPON SASU, the Senegalese subsidiary. Spare parts are kept in Senegal.
The pilot study for Japan’s Ministry of Communications: X-ICS
In fiscal year 2026, SUCRECUBE Japon is carrying out, under contract with Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC), a trial of deploying X-ICS in Senegal. X-ICS is a cross-organisational information and communication system being developed by Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT).
X-ICS passes information from device to device and keeps the necessary data in sync, even where there is no internet. NICT calls it an information “bucket brigade”. In rural Africa, where the mobile network drops several times a day, it offers a new option. For details of how it works, see NICT’s introduction page (in Japanese).
The trial installs X-ICS at the two Sandiara sites and the management site in Dakar. It checks that on-site business records stay complete when the connection drops. This is the first year of a three-year plan. X-ICS is NICT’s technology. SUCRECUBE Japon installs and operates it in the field.
Technical cooperation with UCAD
On 20 August 2026, SUCRECUBE Japon signed a memorandum of understanding on technical cooperation with the Faculty of Science and Technology of Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar (UCAD). With a Senegalese researcher at NICT and with UCAD, X-ICS will be adapted to conditions in Senegal. On the Japanese side, government and business work together. On the Senegalese side, it is industry and the university. The framework is a new one.
The technology will be combined with the solar facilities SUCRECUBE Japon already runs in Senegal. The aim is to deliver the founding slogan, “electricity and communications for Africa”, together with a technology developed in Japan. “Without a network, even a smartphone is of no use,” says Koichi SATO, CEO. This problem, which remains once electricity has arrived, is little known in industrialised countries.
The Japanese public programmes we take part in are listed on the programmes page.
Enquiries
TPDS can be installed in schools, health posts, town halls and any building without power or connectivity. Tell us the area, the number of buildings and what you want to use it for.