“My work as a Solar Sister Entrepreneur helps women to have more income and not have to ask but be independent. I am so proud because I am independent. I feel joy in my heart because I get excellent customer feedback, making me happy.” Sherifat Ojewoye
Sherifat Ojewoye started as a Solar Sister Entrepreneur in 2016 after her husband met a Solar Sister Business Development Associate at his school. He bought a lamp from her and told Sherifat about Solar Sister.
After joining Solar Sister, Sherifat’s husband helped her open her shop that same year. She grew her business over time, adding a very successful solar phone charging station. She can charge about twenty phones daily, even more, if it is sunny. She has ten ports to plug in the phones and plans to add more. People drop their phones off throughout the day for a few hours to be charged. Sometimes, she has to turn people away. After school, Kehinde, her fifteen-year-old daughter, helps with the phone charging.
Sherifat sells soaps, household products, essential oils, and her husband’s books. On a table in the front, she displays her solar lamps. Even though her shop is in Lagos, the largest city in Nigeria with more than twenty-one million inhabitants, Sherifat says the electricity is sporadic. Sometimes it is off entirely for weeks at a time. She says the solar lights work well as a backup and are more durable than the torch lights you can buy from the market. Plus, the batteries for the torch lights are expensive.
Sherifat said she recently met a lady who first thought solar lights were too expensive. One night she had an accident with the candle when was using for light and almost burned the house down. She came by the next day and bought a solar lamp, saying she’d never use the candle again.
Feature image: Sherifat at her shop in Lagos, Nigeria, with her fifteen-year-old daughter, Kehinde, and six-year-old son, Oyinkansola.