country: Africa
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Senegal takes a giant leap towards gender mainstreaming in national energy policies and programmes
Blog Series contributed by Energy 4 Impact – #2 of 3 After three years advocating for gender mainstreaming in national energy policies and programmes in Senegal, Energy 4 Impact with funding from ENERGIA*, has achieved important milestones: The SEforALL national documents, the Action Agenda and the Investment prospectus integrate a comprehensive gender perspective with clear…
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Helping women entrepreneurs scale-up rural supply chains to reach last mile markets
Blog Series contributed by Energy 4 Impact – #1 of 3 Energy access and development practitioners seem to agree that ending energy poverty for the most deprived populations and achieving sustainable development is impossible without the involvement of women. Women are not only the users of household energy; if given the opportunity, they can play a critical role…
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Women’s economic empowerment project enhances entrepreneurs’ business acumen and accelerates renewable energy access in Senegal
Blog Series contributed by Energy 4 Impact – #3 of 3 A recent evaluation study examining the effectiveness of Energy 4 Impact’s Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) project in rural Senegal, reveals increased business acumen and confidence among trained women entrepreneurs, as well as increased awareness of clean energy products and their benefits among the local…
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A step towards energy-access equality in Ghana
By Melissa Ruggles* Ghana has made great progress towards equalising energy access this year with the launch of its Social and Gender Integration Plan (SGIP) in October. Ghana’s Millennium Development Authority (MiDA) will oversee implementation of the action plan, which aims to ensure greater energy equality by addressing social inequalities among men, women and vulnerable…
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Advancing women’s leadership to tackle the impacts of climate change
By Melissa Ruggles/ENERGIA In her speech leading up to the COP23 in Bonn (6-17 November), Patricia Espinosa, the UN’s top climate change official, highlights the need to “significantly increase our efforts to reduce emissions and our carbon footprints,” and that “women must be at the forefront” of driving those efforts. Espinosa and others have been…
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Keeping the Lights On: ENERGIA and Solar Sister’s successful partnership leverages women’s power to tackle energy poverty
By Melissa Ruggles* 2,371 women entrepreneurs recruited, trained and mentored, leading to 772,925 people with access to cleaner energy. These figures show how ENERGIA and Solar Sister have been transforming clean energy access for people in Uganda, Nigeria and Tanzania since becoming partners in September 2014. For four years now, Solar Sister has been a…
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Cultivating women’s inner strength and capacities for entrepreneurship
Dr. Anita Shankar discusses agency building, ENERGIA’s work, and how women are empowered from the inside out. When you hear the word ‘agency’, the first thing that may come to mind is a physical entity, a building with people working away in an office, a travel agency, a recruitment agency, a government department, and so…
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Famous singer lending her voice to the cause of expanding energy access and women’s opportunities
“We get a lot more media attention when our celebrity ambassadors take action, and we believe that having celebrities carry our message has enabled us to reach out to a wider segment of the population,” said Laura Nolan, Communications officer at Energy 4 Impact in Senegal. The most prominent celebrity that Energy 4 Impact has…
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Successful efforts to integrate gender into energy policies and investments in Senegal
At the outset of the ENERGIA sponsored advocacy project in Senegal, Energy 4 Impact reported that energy laws and regulatory and policy documents did not take gender into account. Instead, generic expressions such as “access to modern forms of energy and electricity in rural areas”, “energy access for all” or “vulnerable persons” appeared in those…
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Tackling the ‘last mile’ energy access challenge through women’s economic empowerment
Access to energy is critical for women’s economic empowerment: not only can it free up time for other economic activities, but it also offers opportunities to engage into new roles and gain control over economic decisions. Energy 4 Impact’s Alessandra Moscadelli wrote a blogpost entry for Oxfam’s Women’s Economic Empowerment in Agriculture Knowledge Hub. …
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Meet the winners of the ENERGIA Women Entrepreneurship Award
ENERGIA brought five exceptional women from Africa and Asia to the Sustainable Energy for All Forum. These five women are successful entrepreneurs, leaders in their communities and role models for other entrepreneurs. They have all been actively engaged in our Womens’ Economic Empowerment Programme for at least one year and have been continuously running a…
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Women can be true change makers in the scaling up of energy access
Pursuing the goal of universal access to modern energy services by 2030 – while 1.1 billion people still live without energy access, and more than 2.7 billion without clean cooking facilities – requires concerted international effort and a break from business-as-usual. That is precisely what ENERGIA has been doing: building and taking part in international…