Challenge
Women benefit disproportionately from access to electricity in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), but due to cultural norms and lower purchasing power, have less decision-making power over household or business-related clean energy investments. As a result, overall demand for clean energy solutions, including off-grid solar (OGS)/Solar Home Systems (SHS), productive use appliances (PUA), and clean cook stove technologies, is dampened and opportunities to improve women’s empowerment foregone.
Solution
With financial support from the FMO, Nithio, a clean-energy lender to OGS companies, has hired Advision Finance and Making Cents to conduct research and product development activities to design a gender-focused results-based financing product that can increase the outreach of clean energy solutions for women across SSA, ultimately enabling Nithio to reach gender parity with 50% of end-user customers being women.
Making Cents led the market-research component of the activity, conducting desk-research, interviewing senior leadership from eight OGS companies, and conducting country-level research through individual interviews and focus groups with staff, sales agents, and consumers of OGS solutions in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya and Nigeria. The research indicated that OGS companies are willing to increase outreach to women, but need to improve internal policies, adjust products and receive financial incentives to be successful. The results are being used to design the results-based financing product for Nithio and develop a fundraising plan to increase Nithio’s resources to offer the new product.