(Business in Cameroon) – Starting in 2026, 20,000 smart meters will be installed on government buildings and on the public lighting network in Cameroon. The announcement was made in late November 2025 by Minister of Water and Energy Gaston Eloundou Essomba during the budget defense for his department before the National Assembly’s Finance Committee. The goal is to ensure accurate measurement of the State’s electricity consumption and reduce recurrent disputes with Eneo, the national distributor. “It is indeed intended to put an end to the recurring disagreements between state entities and Eneo over billing,” an internal source at the company confirms.
Today, public entities frequently challenge Eneo’s invoices, citing alleged overbilling. In response, Eneo plans to equip public buildings with smart meters that both parties can monitor, reducing the scope for contestation. This shift is seen as especially important for public lighting, where billing is still based on estimates.
Under the current method, the number of streetlights in Yaoundé and Douala is counted and billed according to 12 hours of daily use. The calculation assumes that some streetlights remain on 24 hours a day and that many fixtures in remote neighborhoods are not counted. Municipalities regularly contest these amounts, accusing the counting commission of including solar-powered streetlights, which do not fall under Eneo’s responsibility. Installing meters across the public lighting network is expected to move billing from estimation to actual measured consumption.
State bill payments: an unresolved challenge
While installing smart meters on public lighting and administrative buildings is expected to result in fairer billing, it does not resolve the core issue: the effective payment of electricity bills by the State and its entities. This problem has been identified for several years as one of the main sources of financial imbalance in Cameroon’s power sector.
“We issue about CFA7 billion in monthly invoices to public entities (ministries, public companies, hospitals, universities…), but since the beginning of 2024, our collections have been limited to CFA1.5 billion in January and CFA1.8 billion in February,” Eneo CEO Amine Homman Ludiye said in an interview with Investir au Cameroun in April 2024. He noted that an agreement had provided for weekly payments of CFA1 billion toward the State’s electricity bill to ease outstanding balances, but the measure was applied only once in January and February 2024.
Over the first two months of 2024, Eneo billed public entities CFA14 billion but collected only CFA3.3 billion, creating a deficit of more than CFA10 billion. During this same period, the company received only CFA2 billion for partial payment of the central government’s electricity consumption, although CFA8 billion had been expected, generating CFA6 billion in unpaid bills.
Deductions planned from subsidies to clear arrears
Beginning in 2026, the government plans to tighten enforcement on public entities that accumulate unpaid electricity bills. The objective is to ease pressure on the Treasury, which is regularly compelled to cover these debts to prevent a liquidity crisis at Eneo, whose cash constraints threaten the balance of the power sector.
The Cameroon Energy Compact, a policy document prepared by the State and its international partners to develop sustainable energy infrastructure through 2030, proposes several measures starting in 2026. “For public institutions: include electricity bills from month N-1 in the payroll file for month N; include electricity arrears in their budgets; and deduct subsidies at the source for beneficiary entities to offset energy consumption when arrears persist,” the text states.
For state-owned enterprises, the document similarly recommends: “for enterprises receiving advances, deduct at the source the amounts owed for electricity consumption.” It also calls for a “binding regulatory text establishing the modalities for paying the electricity bills of the central government.” These mechanisms aim to automate recovery and limit the accumulation of new arrears, in a context where the State and its entities remain key debtors for Eneo.
BRM
