Women are increasingly taking on leadership roles in the renewable energy sector, establishing  businesses as energy producers, distributors and service providers. Women are also taking on an increasing number of roles at the entry level in clean energy companies across Africa – in fact, more women make up roles in renewable energy than the traditional energy sector. Companies are also paying more attention to gender in their policies and operations. Over the last five years, companies have adopted more inclusive practices such as flexible working hours, implementing more stringent safety measures and hiring women into traditionally male-dominated roles.

Yet, despite this progress, women remain severely under-represented across levels of management in clean energy companies. In renewable energy companies in sub-Saharan Africa, women hold 25% of leadership roles and 26% of middle and lower-level manager roles, respectively. A key to unlocking parity across these levels is to focus on how women, the sector and the surrounding enabling environment can focus on how to advance and retain women to ensure they are recognized and promoted for their valuable contributions.

This report builds the previous report, “Bottlenecks & Breakthroughs: Advancing Gender Equity in African Clean Energy” and tries to further address what limits women’s advancement and retention.