LocationsThe power to produce: How solar mini-grids can transform women’s economic futures
August 31, 2026
At Co-Creator Investment in Manzini, Eswatini, the machinery is demanding: laser engraving, 3D printing, large-format printing and sublimation. Sandra Ntsandvose Dlamini’s enterprise once spent approximately E500 each week on grid electricity. Then a hybrid solar system was installed. Even after she added a new, higher-powered printer, her spending on national-grid electricity fell to around E380 in the period after installation.
Anthonette Quayee, a Liberian African Young Women Leaders fellow deployed to Eswatini, reads these figures as evidence of a structural change in the enterprise. “Expanded capacity, increased energy demand, and the business is still spending less,” she observes. Lower operating costs reshaped the business’s financial architecture and created space for new equipment, greater capacity and future investment.
Anthonette’s analysis offers a useful lens for energy policy. The impact of a connection can be measured through hours returned to the day, goods preserved, equipment kept in operation, safer movement after dark and income protected from the disruption of outages.
Across many African communities, unreliable energy quietly determines the shape of women’s days. Time that could be spent learning, resting or earning is absorbed by collecting firewood, tending fires or finding alternatives when electricity fails. Businesses built around food preparation, tailoring, hairdressing, farming or refrigeration are restricted to daylight, manual labour and uncertain production cycles.
For Khouloud Guesmi, a Tunisian fellow deployed to Equatorial Guinea, the consequences became particularly tangible during repeated power cuts in Tunisia over the summer. On some of the hottest days of the year, outages disrupted businesses and households alike. But the economic cost was not evenly distributed. Women working in agriculture, food processing, textile factories and small family-run businesses were among those whose livelihoods depended most directly on being able to work consistently, preserve products and meet demand.
“What stayed with me most was how different people experience the same outage,” Khouloud reflects. For a household with savings, losing electricity for several hours may be frustrating. For someone living day to day, including many rural women and low-income workers, those same hours can mean income that cannot easily be recovered.
What stayed with me most was how different people experience the same outage.Khouloud Guesmi, 4th cohort AfYWL fellow
Her experience also points to knowledge that long predates modern energy systems. Khouloud recalls how her grandmother’s generation preserved tomatoes, peppers, figs and herbs by drying them in the sun, practices largely maintained and passed down by women. The lesson is not that communities should return to older forms of production, but that resilience has always depended on the ability to adapt when systems fail.
Aminata Sy Fall, a Senegalese fellow deployed to Cameroon, traces the connection from electricity to production and then to agency. “Once electricity became available, things shifted,” she says of women working in food processing. Grinding machinery and refrigeration allowed them to produce more, reduce waste, respond to demand and diversify into activities such as cold drinks or the storage of perishable goods. She also saw a change in how women viewed their place in the household and community: “What stood out the most is the confidence that came with it.”
Once electricity became available, things shifted.Aminata Sy Fall, 4th cohort AfYWL fellow
The pressures intensify in remote and conflict-affected settings. Agnes Ayukmanda Arrey Etta, a Cameroonian fellow deployed to Tanzania, frames energy as a question of time, livelihoods and protection. “It influences how time is spent, how livelihoods are sustained, and how vulnerability is experienced,” she says. Darkness can restrict movement and heighten exposure to risk, while unreliable power shortens trading hours and disrupts access to basic services. Reliable lighting can extend productive hours and strengthen safety across public and commercial spaces.
Solar mini-grids bring power closer to communities facing delayed or unreliable national-grid connections. They can support an interconnected productive ecosystem: irrigation pumps and cold rooms; milling machines and oil presses; workshops and restaurants; digital services, schools, boreholes and health clinics.
For Khouloud, their value also lies in reducing dependence on a single source of power. “When energy is reliable, planning becomes possible. When planning becomes possible, opportunities grow.” For women running small enterprises, that predictability can determine whether dairy products can be stored, agricultural goods processed, customer orders completed or a day’s income preserved.
Aminata emphasizes the practical value of mini-grids for underserved areas: “They bring energy closer to communities in a practical and sustainable way.”
Agnes recalls a rural community where women collectively invested in milling equipment and basic cold storage after gaining reliable solar power. Grain and cassava processing became faster and less physically demanding. Women could serve more customers, work after sunset and build more predictable incomes. What appeared at first to be an energy intervention became a shift in how time, labour and opportunity were organized.
Christian Anteneh Demissie, an Ethiopian fellow deployed to Namibia, locates this opportunity within a vision of rural industrialization. She points to Zimbabwe’s Hakwata Green Village, where a UNDP-supported 200-kilowatt solar mini-grid supplies over 85 households, 18 businesses, a school, a clinic and three community boreholes. Women use electrically powered oil presses for cooking-oil and peanut butter production, adding value to local crops and participating more competitively in local markets. Reliable power at the clinic simultaneously strengthens maternal and child health services.
Christian’s example demonstrates how a mini-grid can connect energy, enterprise, agriculture, health, water and local industrialization. Each connection reinforces the others, creating economic infrastructure around which a rural community can organize growth.
Lasting gains depend on affordability, reliability and the productive uses available to women. Energy investment works best within an enabling system of affordable connections, targeted subsidies, appliance finance, technical skills, maintenance capacity, digital access and routes to green finance.
Anthonette distils one of the central requirements in five words: “Financing must be gender responsive.” Credit structures, pricing and collateral requirements all influence whether women-led enterprises can invest in equipment and plan confidently.
Financing must be gender responsive.Anthonette Quayee, 4th cohort AfYWL fellow
Design must also begin with lived realities. “Their daily realities should shape what works in practice,” Agnes argues. Her formulation places women’s knowledge at the centre of decisions about location, financing, productive equipment and community priorities.
Khouloud similarly argues that energy should be treated as an investment in development rather than as a standalone infrastructure project. Generation capacity matters, but so does the economic activity that reliable energy makes possible. Connecting energy investment with local enterprise, agriculture, services and the needs of underserved communities can extend its impact far beyond the provision of electricity itself.
Christian reaches the same conclusion through the financing and policy lens. “Energy access must also go hand in hand with enabling systems, including access to finance and digital technology,” she says. Her contribution situates energy within African economic transformation, value addition and rural enterprise. In her words, “Investing in energy access is investing in women’s equality, resilience, and shared prosperity.”
Energy access must also go hand in hand with enabling systems, including access to finance and digital technologyChristian Anteneh Demissie, 4th cohort AfYWL fellow
The fellows also see women occupying every part of the energy system as customers, engineers, technicians, vendors, entrepreneurs, financiers and policymakers. Aminata calls for women’s participation from project design through implementation. Anthonette is equally direct: “We need to be at the design and implementation table.”
For Khouloud, young African women leaders also have a role in connecting financing and policy decisions with the realities of the communities those investments are intended to serve. That means ensuring that energy projects create durable opportunities for women entrepreneurs, workers and farmers, rather than treating access to electricity as an end in itself.
Across Africa, women are already converting energy into enterprise, local value addition, stronger services and influence over economic decisions. Solar mini-grids can reinforce this leadership by aligning infrastructure with finance, skills, technology and productive assets. The next phase of Africa’s energy transition can scale what communities are already demonstrating: when women shape energy systems, those systems reflect local ambition, sustain African enterprise and carry prosperity further.