This project aimed to enable the adoption of energy-efficient solutions in 10 underserved communities across Nigeria via a women-led entrepreneurship model. We achieved this through an innovative social enterprise model where 100 women were provided with revolving seed capital grants to distribute clean cookstoves and solar lamps. Our goal aligns with the GEF Small Grants Programm principle under the United Nations Office for Project Services, which states that global environmental problems can best be addressed if local people are involved and there is direct community benefit and ownership.
In rural Nigeria, just 1 in 4 people have access to electricity; this translates to only 40 percent of Nigerian households having access to electricity. Only approximately 10 percent of households in rural areas connect to electricity. Families in rural areas spend 30-40% income on household energy (the US average is 5%).
Energy poverty is most intense in last-mile, hard-to-reach communities and mainly affects women, who are the primary users and producers of household energy. The outcomes of energy poverty include limiting women’s and girls’ access to education and economic opportunities and disproportionally exposing them to health risks. Women and girls in rural areas spend a large part of their day collecting fuelwood, which translates not only into perpetuating poverty, health issues, and inequality but also into lost opportunities for education and remunerated labor.
Women can play a leading role in the transition to clean energy as consumers, helping to shift energy consumption – and leading transformative change in the energy industry.
A woman is economically empowered when she can succeed, advance economically, and make and act on economic decisions. Women need skills and resources to compete in markets and fair and equal access to economic institutions to succeed and advance economically. To have power and agency to benefit from economic activities, women must have the ability to make and act on decisions and control resources and profits.
The lack of economic opportunity for women is especially concerning when six out of 10 of the world’s poorest people are women. Women are vulnerable to extreme poverty because they face greater burdens of unpaid work, have fewer assets and productive resources than men, are exposed to gender-based violence, and are more likely to be forced into early marriage. These factors, as well as systemic gender bias and lack of representation in positions of leadership and power, reduce women’s ability to participate fully in the economy and achieve prosperity. In sub-Saharan Africa, as with other regions, women face deeply rooted obstacles to achieving their economic potential.
This project, launched in 2021, sought to improve the lives of 100 women in Kwara, Bayelsa, Nasarawa, and Kogi states to start and maintain a clean energy business. The women received business skill development, coaching, and support and formed Sisterhood groups for peer-to-peer support. They received one-on-one coaching and support as necessary to address challenges threatening business growth.
Women and girls are primarily the most marginalized groups in rural energy access. This forms the basis for focusing the project on empowering 100 women to grow clean energy businesses and take the lead in enabling clean energy access to their communities. Additionally, 35 women out of the 100 beneficiaries were classified as youth, i.e., between the ages of 15 and 35.
Solar Sister entrepreneurs were able to use their own first-hand experience as users and the power of their social networks to educate their community about the benefits of clean energy. Being rooted in their communities means that they are also more trusted and readily available for quality after-sales service.
While implementing the project, the women distributed 8,100 clean energy products, including solar lights and clean cookstoves, enabling energy access to 37,736 persons. This results in a recorded average household savings worth $129 over the lifetime of the clean energy products. These savings are generated by replacing kerosene candles with clean lighting solutions.
In doing so, last-mile communities and households can make the shift from climate risk behaviors – the use of kerosene, candles, firewood, and charcoal.
Owing to the successful outcome of this program, Solar Sister has continued to upscale its network of women entrepreneurs in the SGP project states. More women entrepreneurs have been empowered, and the project’s women beneficiaries have continued to receive support to expand their businesses.
Another successful result of this project is twelve communities in two additional states, 350 women and youth entrepreneurs have been empowered to start clean energy businesses. They are also receiving training and support to expand their business.
Video history and implementation of the project.
Long-term effects of these projects include:
- Education: Over 90% of parents reported improvement in their children’s academic performance owing to using solar light for school homework.
- Health: Using solar lights and clean cookstoves has significantly reduced the harmful health conditions faced by using fossil fuel sources.
- Improved Livelihoods: These women can contribute to the finances of the family and the welfare of their children from the income they make in their businesses.
- Reduced gender-based violence: The beneficiaries can now acquire assets for themselves, gain confidence and recognition in their various communities, attain leadership positions, and be equally productive. Additionally, young girls who have been known to be saddled with the responsibility of sourcing cooking fuel from the forest have experienced sexual violence such as rape and assaults.
- Modeling for the future: There is a future hope for the children of the women entrepreneurs, who will be influenced and inspired to value the benefits of engaging in income-generating activities.
- Safer and greener environments:
- The use of clean cookstoves and solar lights has reduced black carbon emissions (which is the 2nd largest contributor to climate change after CO2) by 25%, which results from burning solid fuels for cooking and heating in homes for lighting.
- Reduced forestation: Cooking with efficient cookstoves reduces the need for charcoal by 70%. As households replace open wood fire cooking and traditional charcoal stoves, their communities have less of a need to cut trees down as a source of cooking fuel.