Mother of four, farmer, wife, and small business woman, Patricia Shayo is a determined and creative Tanzanian woman. When she’s not managing the household and raising four children – including twins! – she brings in extra cash by making nutritious sorghum flour to sell door to door. Patricia also farms a small plot of land […]
Awa Sene is a shop owner in Khassid, a village of 751 inhabitants situated 18km from the town of Fatick in south west Senegal. In Khassid, as in many of the neighbouring villages, there is limited access to energy, creating a barrier to local development for small businesses and households, and restricting opportunities for economic […]
When Onyinye Onye Ndimele heard about the opportunity to sell solar products, she was not convinced she would be able to make a business out of it. She works as a high school teacher and also sells toiletries like coconut oil and shea butter for extra income. “At the beginning, I was worried about how […]
Thanks to its fertile soil, favourable climate and plentiful supply of water for irrigation, the small village of Lompoul Sur Mer in the Niayes area of north-west Senegal is an ideal location for market gardening. Practiced throughout the year, market gardening is the primary income source for many women in the village. Aïssata Ba, 45 […]
Herma Okonjo and Asenath Onyango are energy entrepreneurs living in Kisumu County, Kenya. Herma runs an improved cookstoves business. She produces liners for Kenya Ceramic Jiko, Uhai and Upesi cookstoves and assembles them. Asenath owns an energy business in improved cook stoves, briquettes and solar products. Both women have come a long way since […]
When she started her business, Shanti Thokar was not aware of the incredible goals she could have reached. As her peers, she married at 18 years and dropped out of school to devote her time to her family. Shanti was engaged in her husband’s grocery store and over the years she became familiar with […]
In the lush hillside of Rulindo, a rural district in the Northern Province of Rwanda, not far from the capital city of Kigali, the agricultural village of Ntaruka crests the horizon. This is home to Bernadette, Virginie and Brigitte, three women entrepreneurs collaborating with Nuru Energy, a global social enterprise dedicated to provide households […]
Suku Maya Majhi is preparing the Nepali Dal Bath, with lentils and steamed rice in her new kitchen, equipped with an on-site built improved cookstove (ICS) which replaced the old traditional stove.
Growing from 10 to 3,000 entrepreneurs, Solar Sister has learned many lessons about what works and what doesn’t when it comes to recruitment of women in clean energy value chains. Identifying women who will thrive in our unique business opportunity is critical to scaling Solar Sister’s last mile distribution. Over the past eight years, Solar […]
Neha Shrestha is 22 years old. Thanks to the ENERGIA and Centre for Rural Technology Nepal Women’s Economic Empowerment project, she was able to pursue her dream. Now, she owns a beauty parlour shop in Sindhuli district, Nepal. Life goes really fast in some parts of the world. But not in the Sindhuli valley, […]
Yoselvina Kune, also known as Mama Selvi, is a Christian priest living in Oekam village, a small village three hours away from Kupang, Indonesia. She is part of Kopernik’s Wonder Women Program, an initiative to empower women becoming sales agents of clean energy technologies, such as solar lights, water filters and cookstoves. By selling solar […]
By Tjarda Muller and Melissa Ruggles On this International Women’s Day 2018, we celebrate women—and the need to further empower women—everywhere. Supporting women energy entrepreneurs is at the core of our Women’s Economic Empowerment Programme. Together with partners in six countries, we support over 4,000 women to become empowered entrepreneurs. Today, we share the story […]
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