Access to energy in rural areas of Senegal is a persistent issue. Electrification rates in rural areas of the country can be as low as 4%, and over 89% of the population are still reliant on biomass fuels for thermal energy uses in the home, such as cooking. However, a number of barriers exist to addressing this situation, particularly for female entrepreneurs in the region: other commitments such as domestic work can hamper the amount of time available to establish a business, and technical, financial and organisational capacity is often low. Two non-profit organisations, ENERGIA and Energy4Impact, are partnering with local women entrepreneurs in rural areas of the country to improve energy access and reduce the burdens of unsustainable fuel use on families.
Energy 4 Impact with Women Entrepreneurs in Tambacounda, Senegal. Photo: Judith Quax, July 2017
In the rural Tambacounda region of the country, ENERGIA and Energy4Impact have been training women entrepreneurs to become sales agents for small solar home systems, solar lanterns and improved cookstoves. The organisations have taken an “eco-system” approach to the training, attempting to address the wide range of business, financial, capacity and gender-related barriers to developing women’s energy entrepreneurship as a whole. This has included partnerships with local manufacturers and suppliers to enable access to technologies, as well as business and financial training for entrepreneurs, and sensitising campaigns in the local area to enable homeowners to realise the benefit of engaging with women in the energy product space.
Currently, Energy 4 Impact is supporting 160 women entrepreneurs in Tambacounda to become sales agents of improved cookstoves and solar lanterns. From 2016 to 2017, these entrepreneurs sold 1,132 solar lanterns and 822 efficient biomass cookstoves, helping over 17,000 people access clean thermal energy.
However, the engagement in Senegal by the two non-profit organisations is not solely for the purpose of entrepreneur training. Co-benefits of improved energy access in the business space are also targeted. This is particularly being realised in improved access to solar refrigeration technologies for small-scale agri-businesses. Energy4Impact are partnering with two government organisations to offer technical training for women entrepreneurs in the agri-business sector to use solar refrigeration technologies to diversify their business. The NGO also engaged with private-sector suppliers of equipment to suggest suitable technologies scaled to the size of the women’s business needs. In addition, the NGO also engaged with agri-business owners directly to design and manage credit line mechanisms for leasing solar-powered technologies that could be repaid in instalments, enabling access to technologies on a monthly credit basis applicable to the entrepreneurs’ income.
Finally, the NGOs are partnering directly with women entrepreneurs in the Tambacounda region to offer small solar home systems on an innovative pay-as-you-go basis. This is being conducted in partnership with Boabab+, a social enterprise focusing on PAYG models for solar home systems and solar lanterns. Women entrepreneurs are being trained as distribution agents for the products, and can purchase solar home systems from the enterprise with a 25% down-payment, with the remaining 75% being repaid in three fortnightly instalments with zero interest. Clients are able to access one month’s electricity upon purchase of the system, with further payments able to be made on a daily, weekly or monthly basis through mobile money systems already existing in the region. This gives consumers the flexibility to pay for energy when they need it at a price point appropriate for them, while reducing the economic barriers for entrepreneurs to enter the sector through offering this flexible credit mechanism. The system has proven fairly successful: one entrepreneur in partnership with a local women’s group sold 152 solar lamps from 2016-2017, where they ordinarily would not have had the capital to even begin investing in the technology for sale.
– Daniel Kerr, UCL
References
ENERGIA (2018) Helping women entrepreneurs scale-up rural supply chains to reach last mile markets. Available at: http://www.energia.org/helping-women-entrepreneurs-scale-rural-supply-chains-reach-last-mile-markets/ [Accessed 11th March 2018]
Energy4Impact (2018) Empowered women securing energy access in rural Senegal. Available at: https://www.energy4impact.org/news/empowered-women-securing-energy-access-rural-senegal [Accessed 11th March 2018]
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