Women and Clean Energy in West Africa (WOCEWA)
This project aims to reduce the gender gap in the energy sector in West Africa consistent with the policy for gender mainstreaming in energy access of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The policy seeks to ensure that women and men have equal opportunities to enter and succeed in energy-related fields in the private sector. Its target is to achieve gender balance (50-50) by 2030.
With women-led small and medium-sized enterprises in the energy sector still accounting for less than 10 percent in the ECOWAS region, there is a need to evaluate the current gender mainstreaming strategies, test innovative approaches and use the findings to shape and inform the formulation of new, gender-inclusive finance programs to facilitate business start-ups in the clean energy sector. The project will also inform the scaling of technical and vocational training as well as entrepreneurship and business management training in the energy sector targeted at women.
project
Location
Benin, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, The Gambia, Togo,
Project outputs
Woman carrying a solar pannel near Yangambi, DRC. Photo by Axel Fassio/CIFOR via Flickr under licence CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. https://flic.kr/p/27NYoQe
Gender-Responsive Renewable Energy for Empowerment and Inclusive Energy Transitions
Tuesday 10 November 2026
This side event, hosted by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) as part of COP31, will explore how gender-responsive renewable energy can strengthen women’s livelihoods, agency and economic opportunities, drawing on field experiences from regional and global evidence, policy and financing perspectives. This event is in-person only, and open to anyone attending the […]
Solar panels, Bolivia
Inclusive and Clean Energy for SMEs in Rural Bolivia
7 October 2026
Bolivia has achieved high rates of electricity access, yet rural and semi-rural producers still face major barriers to securing reliable, affordable energy for productive use. Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the agrifood sector play a central role in ensuring national food security and creating employment. However, they remain highly dependent on fossil-fuel-powered pumps with […]
Concentrated Solar Pannels Farm, Noor III in Ouarzazate, Morocco, by Khalid Ghozlani, IDRC
Beyond electricity access: Making Mission 300 sustainable through productive use
3 November 2026
Over 560 million people in sub-Saharan Africa still live without electricity. To address this challenge, the World Bank, the African Development Bank and other partners recently launched Mission 300, an ambitious USD$54 billion (~CAD75 billion) initiative to connect 300 million people in sub-Sahara Africa to electricity by 2030. But for Mission 300 to succeed, a […]