July 2015—Women in rural Africa are building businesses and generating income while working to solve a major challenge for their communities.

Solar Sister is a social enterprise supported by USAID that recruits and trains women entrepreneurs to sell affordable solar lighting and related green products such as mobile phone chargers and fuel efficient cook stoves. By emphasizing partnership, the organization has created an extensive network of private, public and individual donors that provide ongoing support to new entrepreneurs.

The women use their community networks of family, friends and neighbors to create businesses and earn a commission on sales.

Since its founding in 2010, Solar Sister has empowered over 1,200 entrepreneurs and 200,000 beneficiaries in Uganda, Tanzania, Nigeria and elsewhere in rural Africa. It has demonstrated that women are critical in bringing clean energy access to those in need and vital in eradicating energy poverty in Africa. Solar Sister has also shown that clean energy access significantly enhances education, health and income at home and in the community, notably for girls and women.

“Before solar, we bought kerosene. The children got burned and the light was not good,” says Solar Sister entrepreneur Betty Awoi, who lives in Lira, Uganda.

The mother of six is now saving money and using solar power for reading, security and phone charging. Having brought solar power to her community, she and her women’s group plan to bring solar to nearby towns.

Six hundred million people in sub-Saharan Africa—70 percent of the population—are without electricity. Through Power Africa, a multi-partner initiative, USAID is working to increase the number of people with access to power in the region. Solar Sister is an early partner in Power Africa’s Beyond the Grid sub-initiative.

“Simply put, women are powerful mavens and marketers,” says Katherine Lucey, founder and CEO of Solar Sister, USA. “They don’t market technology based on wattage. They market technology with the stories of how solar will allow their children to study at night and how clean cook stoves will allow them to feed their families without coughing over an open fire. They hold the key to addressing distribution gaps to ensure that modern energy gadgets reach the doorsteps of other women in the last mile who stand to benefit most from transformative technology.”

Chantal Uwingabire, a Solar Sister entrepreneur in Rwanda, is now able to pay for her children’s school fees. “To do this for my family and bring light to my neighbors makes me happy,” she says.

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