Field Testing in Sierra Leone
How a Gift to an Aunt Started a Company, and what 350+ People Taught Us to Build.
It Started Before We Even Knew We Were Testing
The Light Providers didn't begin with a formal research plan. It began with a gift.
Founder Ishmael gave his aunt, who lives in Sierra Leone, a wireless solar outdoor light to place over her front door and light her compound at night. What happened next wasn't what he expected, and it set the entire direction of the company.
What His Aunt did with the Light
She didn't use it the way the product was designed to be used. She adapted it to her actual life.
During the day, she put the solar light outside to charge in the sun. At night, when she wasn’t running her generator, she brought it inside. The product became a generator supplement, extending her working hours beyond the time she could afford to run on fuel.
But there was a problem Ishmael hadn't anticipated. He never expected her to use it inside since it was an outdoor motion-sensor light. The motion sensor was activating only when movement was detected, which meant that the moment activity stopped in the room, the light would go dark.
Her three-year-old grandson would wave his hand in front of the light's sensor just to keep the room lit. The light was technically functioning as designed, turning on at night when it motion, but it wasn’t doing the right job for this household.
That gap between how a product is designed and how it's actually used in a real home with real people. That's where The Light Providers began. Not in a business plan. Not in a pitch deck. In a child waving his hand at a sensor in Sierra Leone, trying to keep the lights on.
The First Product Problem
Ishmael went looking for a better solution. The alternatives available weren't better. Constantly buying disposable batteries was expensive and created a recurring dependency for a family already managing tight household finances. Rechargeable light bulbs that lasted only three to four hours were insufficient for a full evening of household activity after a long day without grid power.
The conclusion was unavoidable. The existing products were designed for consumers with other options. They weren't designed for a household in Sierra Leone where the grid without notice can cut out for eight to twelve hours a day. Where fuel for a generator is a real monthly expense, and where a three-year-old waving his hand at a motion sensor was not an edge case. It was a Tuesday.
From a Personal Observation to a Formal Research Process
What started as an accidental field test became a structured commitment to understanding the problem before building any solution. Through the National Science Foundation's I-Corps program, Ishmael was challenged to do what most founders skip: talk to real users at scale before building anything.
I-Corps is a rigorous customer discovery process that pushes entrepreneurs to leave their assumptions behind, get in front of the people they believe they are building for, and listen without an agenda. Ishmael took that challenge and ran further with it than the program required.
Our team member Abu, based in Sierra Leone, conducted on-the-ground interviews and traveled to neighboring Liberia to interview users about the specific challenges they faced living on an unreliable electrical grid. That cross-country perspective gave our research a broader regional picture and revealed patterns that were consistent across both countries.
Research Data
| 350+ | 32 | 10 | 5 | 12 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| People Surveyed | Users interviewed in Liberia and Sierra Leone | U.S. consumers with relatives abroad | NGOs and nonprofits interviewed | Users given products to test in Sierra Leone |
Who We Talked To and Why
32 Potential Users in Liberia and Sierra Leone
Abu traveled throughout Sierra Leone and into Liberia to sit down with people navigating daily life without reliable electricity. Not survey respondents at a computer. Real people in real homes, villages, and communities who had developed their own strategies, workarounds, and frustrations around the absence of power. The interviews covered daily routines, cooking, studying, working, navigating homes after dark, communicating with family, and what each person used for light versus what they wished they had.
Money and light.
Fatu, Sierra Leone
Without reliable electricity for 12 years
Fatu has lived without reliable electricity for twelve years. Not through an extended outage or a temporary infrastructure failure. Twelve years as the baseline condition of daily life in her community. In that time she has never had consistent access to a flashlight. Her light, a small Zola torch, she was able to previously rewire to get it to work had broken again by the time we interviewed her.
When asked what goods she most looks forward to receiving, she said money and light. In that order, or possibly in the same breath. Not food. Not clothing. Light.
Her biggest daily challenges include security. Theft in the surrounding area is a serious and ongoing concern, one that reliable outdoor lighting would directly address.
This is consistent with the Security finding that emerged across our broader research: darkness is not just an inconvenience in these communities. It is a vulnerability that affects safety in real and immediate ways.
Fatu represents the core user The Light Providers was built for. Not someone who has never had electricity and accepted it. Someone who has been fighting for light for twelve years, solving the problem herself when no one else would, and is still waiting for a solution that actually works.
The Cell Phone Problem
One pattern emerged so consistently across the interviews in Sierra Leone and Liberia that it became one of the clearest signals of what a real solution needed to address.
When Abu asked people how they managed at night without electricity, the answer was almost always the same. They used their phones. Not a flashlight. Not a lantern.
The phone screen or the phone torch, held up in a dark room and pointed at whatever needed to be seen. It is an understandable response. A phone is already in your hand.
It requires no additional purchase, and in households where a dedicated light is an expense that does not fit the budget, the phone torch is what you have.
But it creates two problems that make each other worse.
The first is that a phone torch is directional. It lights what you point it at and nothing else. It cannot illuminate a room, sit on a surface while a family eats together, or stay steady above a student doing homework. It requires someone to hold it, aim it, and keep it pointed at the right place. That is not a lighting solution. It is a workaround that makes darkness slightly more manageable while creating its own limitations.
The second problem is the one that matters most. Every minute a phone is being used as a flashlight is a minute it is draining the battery it needs for everything else. Communication. Navigation. Reaching family. Calling for help.
In a community without reliable electricity, a dead phone is not an inconvenience. It is a communication blackout. Family members abroad cannot get through. Emergency calls cannot be made. The safety net that a charged phone provides disappears at exactly the moment conditions are already difficult and the power is already out.
We heard this calculation made out loud in interview after interview. People rationing their screen brightness, watching their battery percentage, and deciding each night how much light they could afford before they had nothing left for an emergency.
That finding directly shaped two things we built: a wireless rechargeable light that provides room-level illumination without touching the phone, and a solar panel that recharges devices from sunlight so the phone battery is never the last resource standing between a family and the dark.
10 U.S. Consumers With Relatives Abroad
Ishmael also interviewed people living in the United States who have family members abroad without reliable electricity. Their experience of the problem is different but equally real. They cannot fix the grid from Atlanta or Houston. They send money but money does not keep the lights on when the generator runs dry at midnight. They worry from a distance and feel limited in what they can actually do. Understanding this side of the problem was as important as understanding the conditions on the ground.
5 NGOs and Nonprofits
We reached out to nonprofit organizations already working on electricity access in underserved communities. Through LinkedIn, we connected with We Care Solar, a nonprofit that provides solar-powered lighting to health facilities in developing countries with a specific focus on maternal and newborn care, where darkness during a delivery can be the difference between life and death. Conversations with organizations like We Care Solar confirmed where existing solutions were falling short and what real-world deployment of solar lighting looked like at the community level.
12 Users Given Products to Test
Beyond interviews, Abu distributed real products to 12 users in Sierra Leone to test in their daily lives, including lights sourced from Amazon that reflect what most people would find when searching for solar lighting online. After an extended period of real-world use, Abu returned to conduct structured interviews about what worked, what failed, and what users wished were different. The findings from these 12 participants shaped every subsequent product decision.
Three Major Findings That Shaped Everything We Build
Our research converged on three major findings. Consistent patterns that emerged across all research contexts in Liberia and Sierra Leone, as well as among diaspora users in the United States.
Finding 1: Education
Students struggled to do homework or learn at night because their homes without power only had one flashlight, and their parents needed that same light to do essential household tasks. One flashlight meant a family had to choose between a parent seeing while cooking or a child seeing while studying. In practice, the parents' task usually took priority. Study hours after dark were consistently lost.
This finding was consistent across households in both rural and urban areas in Sierra Leone and Liberia. The problem was not that families did not value education. The problem was that one light could not be in two places at the same time. A second reliable light in the home, one that did not depend on disposable batteries or grid power, directly extended a child's ability to learn after dark.
Right now, I'm learning to sew. It helps me a lot at night, especially to put my thread through the pins.
Isha
Sierra Leone Field Test Partcipant
Finding 2: Women's Empowerment
Studies show that women reinvest 90 percent of their income in their communities and families, while men reinvest less than 40 percent. In communities without reliable electricity, women shoulder the greatest daily burden, managing households, caring for children, cooking, and keeping family life moving forward in the dark. Reliable light does not just illuminate a room. It extends the hours women have to work, earn, and invest in the people around them.
This finding directly shaped the Pink Flower within our Wear the Mission apparel line and the framing of our Where Light Meets Style collection. It also shaped how we position the product itself, not as a utility item for a generic household, but as a tool that specifically expands what the women at the center of those households can accomplish.
In our field interviews, women described using the light for cooking, caring for newborns in the middle of the night, running small businesses after dark, learning new skills, and navigating their homes and compounds safely. Every one of these activities is downstream of having reliable light. Each of them reflects the 90 percent reinvestment pattern identified in the research.
Finding 3: Security
During interviews in Sierra Leone, security emerged as a top concern that no one had fully anticipated before the research. It is a documented fact: when the lights go out, crime rates increase. Darkness is not just an inconvenience. It is a vulnerability. Compounds without lighting are easier targets for theft. Paths without light are genuinely unsafe to navigate at night. And in some contexts, the withholding of electricity serves as a form of social control, cutting communities off from both light and information.
What Happened When We Put Products in Real Hands
Beyond interviews, we shipped the products to Sierra Leone via DotBleu, a Maryland-based company with ties to the Country. Using their air freight to ensure our packages were delivered overseas safely and on time. Users were able to pick up their packages from DotBleu’s storefront in Sierra Leone for testing without issue.
For those who had challenges, the team member in Sierra Leone (Abu) helped coordinate distribution. In total, we had 12 users in Sierra Leone testing commercially sourced lights that reflect what most people would find when searching online. After extended real-world use, he returned to conduct structured interviews about what worked, what failed, and what users wished were different.
The Motion Sensor Problem
A motion-activated light running on disposable batteries was among the products tested. On paper, it seemed reasonable: no charging required, automatic activation, simple to use. In practice, it didn’t work out as anticipated.
The motion sensor is constantly activated in a household environment, triggered by normal movement. Children walking through a room. Someone is getting up at night. Anything that crossed its path. Every unnecessary activation drained the disposable batteries faster than expected.
Users responded decisively by removing the batteries when the light wasn’t needed, since that was the only way to turn that particular unit off. They identified the problem without instruction and adapted around it without help. That response told us something important about the people we were building for: they are resourceful, practical, and clear about what they need. Our products had to match that.
Disposable batteries also created a recurring cost and dependency. When they ran out, the light stopped working. In communities, they can purchase batteries, but in most cases, they aren’t getting Energizer or Duracell; instead, they get lower-quality batteries. For a household with limited income, that dependency is a significant barrier. A rechargeable solution was not a convenience. It was a necessity.
The Solar Panel Misunderstanding That Created Our Warning Label
A user, unaware that our portable solar panel had no internal battery, plugged it directly into a wall outlet to charge it. The panel was not designed for that. It was damaged.
The first instinct was to explain the product better. The second instinct, the right one, was to recognize that if one user did this, others would too. We immediately added a warning label to every solar panel we produce, clearly stating that the panel contains no battery, charges devices directly from sunlight only, and should never be plugged into a wall outlet.
Security and Solar Placement
When users placed their solar panels outside during the day to capture direct sunlight, they stayed nearby. Not because they wanted to. Because they had to.
Theft in these communities is not random or opportunistic, as most people imagine. It's a symptom of the same problem that The Light Providers was built to solve. When entire neighborhoods have lived without reliable electricity for years, anything that generates or stores power carries real and immediate value. A solar panel sitting in a yard is not just a piece of equipment. It's a resource that someone else in that community needs just as badly as the person who owns it.
They weren't guarding their panels out of distrust of their neighbors. They were navigating a shared scarcity in which the need for light is so acute that even a small solar panel is worth taking a risk on. The concern about theft is not a character flaw in a community. It's a measure of how serious the electricity access problem actually is.
Multiple users across the interviews described the same behavior independently of each other. They stayed close to the panel during charging hours to keep an eye on it.
This feedback directly shapes how we continue to develop our products. The goal has never been a product that performs well in ideal conditions. It is a product that works within the actual constraints of daily life in places where electricity has been a struggle for longer than most people in the United States can imagine.
Sometimes I put it up outside, but I don't leave it there. If I leave there, they will steal it. I sit there with it.
Mary
Sierra Leone Field Test Participant
The Moments That No Product Brief Could Have Generated
The New Mother
Ishmael's cousin had recently given birth. She used her rechargeable light in her home every night to feed her newborn baby. In a household where electricity cuts without warning, the hours after dark are the hours when a newborn's needs donot pause and the ability to see clearly matters most.
When she traveled to an area of the country without electricity, she packed the light with her. It was not just a household tool. It was a travel tool. It moved with her because her need for light moved with her. That insight directly informed the commitment to portability as a core product principle rather than a secondary feature.
Any time I get up at night to ease myself or feed my daughter, the light is always on. It will be as if it is an electric light
Vera
Sierra Leone Field Test Participant
Students and Study Hours
Across multiple interviews, the connection between light and learning was immediate and consistent. Participants described students who could now study after the grid was cut out, children who no longer had to go to neighbors' houses to find a light source, and young people using lights specifically positioned for reading and homework. This directly validated the Education finding from the broader research.
The Emergency Radio: An Unexpected Finding
One of the most surprising results from the field testing was the demand for the emergency radio and the depth of its daily use. Communication access was not initially a core product priority. But interview after interview surfaced the same theme: without electricity, people lose access to information.
Radio broadcasts, emergency announcements, weather alerts, and public communications all require power. This connects directly to the Security finding. The withholding of electricity can function as a form of control, leaving communities not just in physical darkness but cut off from information at the same time. Restoring communication through a battery-free solar and hand-crank powered emergency radio is a direct response to that reality.
What Research and Testing Taught Us About Product Development
Every observation from the field became a product decision. Every interview became a design brief. Here is how specific findings translated into specific product features.
The Tripod
Users needed light overhead and in flexible positions. Market vendors needed light above their stalls. Cooks needed light over a fire. Students needed a stable light above a desk. The tripod extends to over six feet tall and can be positioned in any space without installation. It exists because real users in real situations needed more flexibility than any fixed surface could provide.
The Patent-Pending Wall Mount
Users consistently expressed a desire for a light that could stay in one place and illuminate an entire room without requiring constant management. The wall mount allows users to place the light on any wall surface and leave it there, creating a consistent light source that illuminates an entire room without wiring or a grid connection.
The Magnetic Attachment
Users needed light in many different positions throughout their daily routines, cooking, studying, working, and navigating. The magnetic attachment allows the light to instantly connect to any metal surface. Fast, intuitive, and repositionable in seconds.
Phone Charging Capability
In nearly every interview, keeping phones charged was described as equally urgent to having light. Users charged their phones using the light's built-in USB port, power banks, and the solar panel directly. The ability to reach family abroad and to access information was inseparable from the question of light.
We Continue to Build
Field testing in Sierra Leone is not a phase we completed and moved on from. It is an ongoing practice. The problems our users face are not static. Communities grow. Infrastructure changes or fails to change. New users with new contexts find our products and show us applications we had not anticipated.
Every product decision we make traces back to a real user in a real situation who showed us what was missing. That is not a marketing position. It is the foundation of how we build.