Phase 1 - Online Discussion: Light Up and Power Africa for Women and Men - Gender Inequality in Access to Energy

At the very basic level, lack of access to electricity, to light up and power homes and public spaces, especially in rural communities means that women and girls are exposed to greater insecurity because of the darkness which characterizes their evening and night time activities. Even in urban and semi-urban areas, the high cost of electricity and electrical appliances prohibits women from preserving or refrigerating cooked food, and therefore save on cooking time, so that food spoils more frequently.
Women have to spend more time which they could devote to other economic and social activities, at looking for (market visits) and cooking food.
Beside my home here in Monrovia, there is a group of children that gathers each evening to study under the single street light in the neighborhood – I often wonder how far they come to do their homework here, and how safe they are when the return to their homes at night. Even high fertility is also attributable to lack of electricity and entertainment in the home.

The Bank may invest in energy, but it will take even greater efforts on the part of governments to ensure that electricity, like other utilities such as potable water reaches the poorest. Rural electrification at subsidized rate do help, but greater emphasis needs to be paid on renewable energy sources on the continent.
Cheaper, clean energy, which can be afforded by the poorest will help make communities safe for women and girls, and enhance their economic empowerment.

Thanks for the invitation to join this discussion.
I want to address each of the three questions:

1) What does energy poverty mean for the welfare, income-generation, and empowerment of women and girls in Africa?

Amongst other things, I propose that energy poverty means minimal ability to respond to shocks. Shocks keep or push households back into poverty. Shocks can include many things such as death or illness but also climate induced shocks through sever weather events (short or prolonged) and long term change in climate. Thus energy poverty is related to ability to adapt and demonstrate resilience. This hypothesis is quite critical because if we can make a link between energy poverty and adaptation it means that we can finance programs that reduce energy poverty using the concept of adaptation rather than mitigation.

I believe this is significant because the concept of mitigation finance worked (to a degree) under the Kyoto Protocol but it does not work well under the Paris Agreement. The idea that developed countries will buy significant amounts of mitigation from developing countries faces a number of critical challenges under the Paris Agreement, most notably due to the moral hazard created by the PA's voluntary nature (ie a selling country can lower its level of ambition in order to sell more), but there are also many other challenges which are elaborated elsewhere (see AfDB blogs for CoP22, but they are not posted yet).

However, funding these projects on the basis of adaptation is much more promising. Connecting a house to (an affordable) supply of electricity is probably the greatest single adaptation benefit we can provide - largely because it frees up women and children's time to do better things - income generating opportunities, safer food prep and storage, studying, more time at school, less time collecting firewood and lower indoor air pollution (though this assumes that households use electricity for cooking or at least move up the cooking energy ladder) etc.

2) How can these realities be integrated into the Bank’s interventions and projects to improve energy security within the Light Up and Power Africa initiative?

We have proposed the creation of an Adaptation Benefit Mechanism (ABM) as a financing instrument under the Paris Agreement. AfDB has submitted this in response to the call for inputs on Art 6.8 of the Paris Agreement and you should be able to read it here: http://unfccc.int/documentation/submissions_from_non-party_stakeholders/... under Article 6.8 (currently 3rd box down) but our submission is not yet uploaded.
The ABM is a results based payment mechanism where donors, impact investors and CSR buyers would pay for the delivery of verified adaptation benefit units over the lifetime of a project. It is very similar to the Clean Development Mechanism which stimulated massive private sector investment in mitigation under the Kyoto Protocol. The differences are that there is no compliance mechanism, the units are not fungible (exchangeable), which means they can be measured in different ways (households using a clean cooking stove for a year, households connected to a (mini-)grid etc.) and the buyer buys the story behind the unit - these differences go a long way towards addressing some of the shortfalls of the Kyoto Protocol and the CDM.
But critically, they preserve the financial instrument - an Adaptation Benefit Offtake Agreement (instead of an Emission Reduction Purchase Agreement under the CDM). This contract, signed with a AAA rated offtaker, can be used to borrow money to build the project.

Our hope is that the Parties to the UNFCCC could adopt this as a formal mechanism but even if they do not, AfDB and other Development Finance Institutions could develop it as a voluntary mechanism and use it to encourage private sector engagement in adaptation.

3) How have other organizations tackled this challenge? What can we learn from these experiences?
In my opinion, and looking from a climate finance perspective, we have tried to tackle energy poverty through mitigation. It worked to a degree but with the collapse of the Kyoto Protocol, the demand disappeared. The Paris Agreement will enter into force on 4th Nov and it has no sunset clause. Adaptation is a much more powerful lever to attract climate finance for many reasons and I think we can learn from the successes and failures of the CDM and create a new financing mechanism that would efficiently and transparently transfer funds to households and communities that are most in need of them.

We are now appointing consultants to draft the modalities and procedures and I am seeking an off-taker (donor, Corporate Social Responsibility buyer or an impact iunvestor who is willing to sign the first Adaptation Benefit Off-take Agreement to demonstrate that this new financial mechanism can work.
- If you are interested, let me know g.phillips@afdb.org

So glad to see this forum and opportunity to learn about ADB gender and energy experiences! ENERGIA is always trying to gather more relevant experiences to share in international, regional and national fora and practical operations that we participate in.

Some examples that ENERGIA has collected and often supported, of gender challenges in energy access that electricity utilities have sought to address, include:

- the Botswana Power Corporation (BPC) found out from a Department of Energy study that female-headed households were connecting to the grid at half the rate of male-headed households, in spite of the Draft National Energy Policy calling for inclusion of gender differences in energy planning. So BPC started tracking connection applications by sex of household head, and sought to develop marketing strategies and products to target female-headed households to use electricity in income-generation activities that would make electricity connections more affordable.

- Electricidad de Mozambique (EdM) wanted to increase connections and consumption of electricity from the national grid by rural households for domestic and productive uses, and found that rural Mozambican women did not understand the benefits. EdM carried out a demonstration project using women community workers with knowledge of local languages to create electricity demand through mobilizing women, to provide a model for community outreach. Various energy equipment, gadgets and household appliances were demonstrated to women to show their time and labour-saving benefits. Community Energy Centres were set up to assist rural women to earn an income by using locally available agricultural products and energy efficient technologies.

- an equal opportunity policy developed with the Kenya Power and Light Company (KPLC) found top management support and affirmative action in recruitment, but that women were poorly represented in policy decisions and advancement. The new policy dedicated resources for gender mainstreaming and gender disaggregated data, and set incentives and targets for improving KPLC’s staffing profile.

- ECOWAS has carried out a situation analysis of gender and energy issues in Member States, and found gender imbalances that inhibit representative decision making, and lack of the policy, regulatory and institutional framework around gender mainstreaming in the energy sector. In response, a Regional Policy for Gender Mainstreaming in Energy Access has been validated with energy ministries in all 15 Member States, which sets five strategic objectives and targets for gender-responsive large energy infrastructres and investments as well as for women’s participation in both public and private energy sector.

-in Tanzania, an assessment with the Rural Energy Agency found that while positive employment and income generating opportunities for both women and men followed electrification and REA’s promotion of productive uses of energy, women’s businesses faced specific constraints, and tended to be smaller both in number and value than men-owned businesses. Strengthening partnerships of REA and developers with national and local government, NGOs/CBOs and microfinance institutions that work with women’s businesses were recommended to be strengthened to target specific promotional and credit measures and business skills to women’s as well as men’s businesses, to bridge the gap.

- the Rural Electrification Agency in Uganda hosted a workshop with private contractors, to ensure that any gender actions proposed would be feasible for them. The contractors came up with ideas for effective actions such as task analysis to identify opportunities to employ women, and allocating points in bidding for contracts to firms that employed women or had gone through gender training.

I am wondering whether ADB staff can share examples of ADB energy access projects that have gender-responsive elements? For example, gender assessment at planning stage that identifies some of the energy access gender challenges that Sheila refers to in her opening? Or gender activities included in the energy project to address these? Or sex-disaggregated data collection in the M&E framework to monitor progress towards gender equality in energy access?

What does energy poverty mean for the welfare, income-generation, and empowerment of women and girls in Africa? Energy is very important. Women’s top priority is to provide food for their families- with energy she can have clean cooking facilities, taking care of general household needs, in fact just to basically see to have things done around the house like mobile phone charging, refrigerating food, etc. However, the most pertinent challenges are security and safety in communities; the absence of electricity enable ex-combatants who are already idle to turn into armed robbers, unleashing mayhem on residents of areas not having electricity. Personally, I have friends who were attacked and almost killed because of the lack of electricity in corridors/alleys as they went home at night. As a result of these attacks, they have constant anxiety, thus curtailing their movements. Poorly lit areas stopped women and girls from going certain areas (like adult literacy classes for women) at certain times – Wicked people lurk in dark corners. They take advantage of young girls/women and boys who travel alone or even in pairs. Thus, women are reportedly faced with a constant threat of violence, including rape and sexual harassment.

My comments are related to what institutions like the bank can do for women and girls within the light up and power Africa.

As already said in one of the comments made earlier ; it is very urgent that focus be put on cooking solutions if we want to reduce negative impact of energy poverty on African women and girls. Around .60.% of Africa population stay in rural areas and more than 50% are women and girls. They are the ones to collect wood for cooking and it is a heavy burden, especially for girls who have also to go to schools and are supposed to revise their lessons the evening. Appropriate Cooking and lighting solutions have two main advantages:

• economic: it would be financially affordable and with very little running costs;

• Environmental: reduction of deforestation From the experience the big power generation projects are very important but are also difficult to deliver quickly. They take years to materialize . Connections capacity may also constitute another challenges for rural areas , as utilities are more interested by main towns where potential consumers are concentrated. Moreover, many African utilities will need substantial reforms and huge financial support to be able to provide power in main cities as well as rural areas. This changes will require time to concretize To increase generation capacity, the recent trend is to build partnership between IPP and public sector through power utilities. The bank is rightly encouraging also this useful partnership. In doing so, the issue of price will have to carefully be reviewed, so that to make it affordable to segment of vulnerable population among which girls and women. In the meantime, the bank by putting efforts on big power projects, led by utilities and IPPs, there is also need for local solutions for poor people, women and girls in rural and in sub urban areas. Appropriate financing mechanisms should then be part of the top priority to set up; and climate finance could be one of the opportunities to explore.

Thank you for the invitation to this valuable forum. Greetings to old friends and new colleagues here. I do not have some thing directly on the topic but believe it is relevant to seek some feedback here. Among the technologies that will remain important for lighting will be compact fluorescent lamps (CFL) as they are much more efficient and their costs have been driven down (LEDs will become important soon but are perhaps too expensive now). My question is CFLs have small amounts of mercury and mercury is highly poisonous. It appears to me the mercury pollution in house hold wastes can become a potential hazard in countries with poor information, no recycling and no separation of waste streams into hazardous and toxic materials which need separate handling and disposal.

My question is if it is too early to worry about this and we should only think about it after more poor people, men and women, have the basic access? Or should it be attended to early, potentially increasing the cost of lamps by adding the costs of collections and disposal to life cycle costs?

Any thoughts and experiences will be welcome as I am not sure where the balance lies in this case, especially given the importance of lighting for women and girls. Thank you.

- La pauvreté énergétique signifie l'absence de l'énergie ou l'insuffisance de l'énergie. En Afrique, cette pauvreté énergétique pèse plus sur les ménages dont les tutrices sont les femmes et les filles qui se rabattent sur les bois, les charbon de bois pour alimenter les foyers.Les conséquences sont: la destruction des forêts dont le changement climatique, la perte de beaucoup de temps pour faire la cuisine, les maladies cardio-vasculaires des femmes et filles et la pauvreté.
- L'Afrique a besoin d'être électrifiée pour l'autonomisation des femmes et filles. A cet effet, la Banque Africaine de développement (BAD) peut abriter " Power for all " qui a pour mission de réduire la pauvreté énergétique d'ici 2025 comme l'avait signifié la conférence de press du 11 Février 2016 de la BAD:, je cite " Adesina a présenté le nouveau programme de la Banque, y compris les High 5s, qui visent à éclairer l'Afrique, pour nourrir l'Afrique, d'industrialiser l'Afrique, d'intégrer l'Afrique et à améliorer les conditions de vie des Africains. " Et pour réaliser cette vision il faut une implication des gouvernements, de la société civile, du secteur privé, du monde scientifique et technologique. La BAD doit alors signer de partenariat avec les institutions accréditées par power for all et développer une collaboration multilatérale avec les autres banques multilatérales, les gouvernements et Fondations qui soutiennent cette vision d'énergie pour tous d'ici 2025.
- Pour encourager la participation et la prospérité des femmes et filles africaines les institutions financières peuvent prendre des mesures incitatives à l'égard des femmes et filles qui accepteraient faire carrière du domaine énergétique. Ces mesures vont favoriser la lutte contre le changement climatique dont les gaz dégagés par les ménages contribue à plus de 10% à la production des gaz à effet de serre.
- En Asie et en Australie des compagnies utilisent des femmes et filles comme producteur des énergies renouvelables: les fourneaux solaires, des fourneaux améliorés, des panneaux solaires photovoltaïques. En Afrique nous pouvons exciter les femmes et filles à se spécialiser dans la technologie énergétique, dans la distribution de l'énergie, dans la maintenance etc.. pour la promotion du genre dans le secteur. La formation s'impose pour enclencher cette transformation positive des conditions de vies des millions de personnes vivant dans l'obscurité en Afrique.

Question 1:
What does energy poverty mean for women and girls in Africa, for their welfare, income-generation, and empowerment?
Reliance on inefficient and polluting cookstoves and fuels disproportionately impacts women and girls because cooking and securing sufficient household energy remains a woman’s responsibility in most countries. In order to cook for their families and secure the energy needs of their households, women and girls must work long, arduous hours, which in many cases puts their health and safety at risk. Without access to cleaner cooking solutions, women are exposed to deadly smoke that kills over 4 million people every year (WHO, 2016), and are forced to walk up to 5 hours per day to search for fuel and carry heavy loads of firewood for miles (Dutta, 2005; United Nations, 2010). Not only is fuel collection extremely time consuming and laborious, but in conflict settings particularly, women face an increased vulnerability to physical and sexual violence when leaving the safety of their communities or refugee camps to find fuelwood (Patrick, 2007; WRC, 2011).

The time spent collecting fuel and cooking food can take hours contributing significantly to the amount of unpaid work and the time poverty that women face. Globally, women take on three times as much unpaid care work generally as men. On average, 61% is routine housework such as cooking, cleaning, collecting water and fuel, home maintenance and gardening (McKinsey, 2016) -- with women spending four times as much time cooking compared to men (equating to 83 minutes per day) (OECD, 2011). This number varies widely depending on country and urban versus rural locations. In South Asia, for example, women spend 374 hours collecting fuel per year (or ~61 minutes per day), and an additional 4 hours cooking daily on traditional stoves (Practical Action, 2014).

Ultimately, greater use of clean and efficient cookstoves and fuels could lead to significant reductions in time spent collecting fuel and cooking. Recent research (Brooks et al, 2016) in North India (rural) reveals that liquified petroleum gas (LPG) stoves result in 105 fewer minutes per day collecting biomass fuels, which equates to an 80% reduction in time spent on fuel collection. The same study found that cooking with LPG is estimated to reduce cooking time by 2.6 hours per day (80%).

A reduction of time spent cooking and collecting fuel can allow women to complete other responsibilities and pursue income-generating opportunities, education, and rest – as they choose.

On a final and more broad note, clean cooking can directly deliver gains across ten of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and contribute to an enabling environment for achieving the entire Agenda 2030. The Alliance and partners successfully advocated for the inclusion robust indicators on ambient and household air pollution, unpaid work, and cooking energy into the measurement framework of the SDGs.

For more information on how energy poverty impacts women and girls, as well as the intersection of clean cooking with the SDGs, see the following:
• SDG landing page on the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves website
• SDG Factsheet
• Women Deliver Factsheet
• Post by the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves on the Gates Annual letter discussing time poverty and energy
• Sarah’s story video illustrating what a clean cookstove means for a woman in Kenya

This is an important opportunity to influence the narratives on the future of Africa and the important actions that have to be taken to address the situation of poor women in Africa and women's rights in the continent. Africa has what is considered by many, to be the best and most progressive women's rights policy instrument in the Protocol on the Rights of African Women. Regional and global frameworks have reinforced Africa’s commitment to accelerate gender equality and women’s empowerment in social, economic and political spheres. Both the African Common Position on the post-2015 agenda and the Outcome Document of the Rio+20 Conference emphasize gender equality as a fundamental goal underpinning other targets..... Gender equality is also a cornerstone of African Union’s (AU’s) Agenda 2063. In terms of a policy framework - we believe we have it covered, and I hope this applies to that touching on energy.What is needed now are concrete actions, strategies and programmes that can translate the policy into reality for women.At regional level, we have the 2005 Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, the Solemn Declaration of African Heads of States on Gender Equality (2004, adopting of 2014 as Women’s Empowerment Year and declaration of 2010–2020 as the African Women’s Decade by the African Union (AU). ECAs Gender and Development Index (AGDI) facilitates the monitoring of Africa’s progress in the implementation of global, regional and sub-regional commitments affecting women At national level, governments have national machineries, such as ministries of gender, gender commissions and gender focal points to coordinate and action towards gender equality. All these serve as instruments that provide the basis for holding governments accountable for advancing the status of women in their respective countries.
In spite of the advances made, engrained social norms that promote discrimination against women persist; poverty and traditional customs continue to undermine gains made and continue to pose barriers to efforts to see the condition of women improve throughout the continent. There is still a lot of work that remains, with regards to policy implementation.

Poverty, inequality, discriminatory practices, gender based violence persist, as do images and stories of women who have to bear the weight of traditions and cultural practices that continue to marginalize and disadvantage women. In most countries, women remain marginalized in spite of strides made. Forms of discrimination and harmful practices against women remain unaddressed, and women continue to experience human rights violations. Lack of data obscures statistical information on how many women are left untouched by the progress made. Therefore, much remains to be done to realize the human rights of women in Africa.

The question then is, how can stakeholders, particularly women’s advocacy and rights groups take advantage and drive conversations, shape political opinions and initiate actions that will address the persistent challenges that remain in spite of the policy frameworks and activities taken thus far? We have international consensus, we have good will from national governments and regional organisations including AfDB through your Gender Strategy 2018, we have policy frameworks, we have platforms for action, and now 2063. A number of recommendations to move us forward so as to transform women’s lives pertain;

1. Acknowledge the critical role of women’s voice and collective action in driving the transformation of women’s lives and changes that lead to women’s empowerment and use their voices to map women, especially poor women into such releveant coversations e.g on renewable energy and amplify their voices in advocacy spaces from national, regional, continental and global levels and how then that impacts on women rights.
2. Build, strengthen and resource a pan-African women's movement with links that are anchored in the realities of the poorest women so that recommendations and changes advocated by strong, powerful women have resonance and pertinence at the local levels too.
3. Women must use their positions to champion the translation of existing policy frameworks, international and regional consensus, government good will, national momentum towards gender equality and women’s empowerment to real tangible, measurable and observable improvements in women’s status.
4. Women must make continue to make the necessary connections that drive efforts for change and continue to strive to enter those power positions from which they are still kept, but from which decisions that affect women’s lives and can transform women’s lives are made.
5. Bring poor women to the conversation tables about interventions, and efforts to transformation their lives and improve their status; Bring them in through their life stories, and narratives so that their life stories are constantly at the conversation tables to inform the nature and direction of our conversations on how to raise and improve the status of poor women and have the at the heart of what we do.
a. Their life stories would then guide decisions on the kind of interventions and initiatives to be undertaken that would work or what would not work to transform their lives. It will also inform the composition of factors that keep intervention measures from reaching them and lifting them up, or the combination of measures that would offset these walls that keep them from access to initiatives aimed at improving their status.
6. Continuously monitor persistent challenges to women realizing their rights, empowerment or equality, both existing ones and emerging ones like the rise of fundamentalism and identify best ways and means to address these.
7. Do research, desegregate data by gender, provide information and knowledge of poor women’s lives and build understanding of the reforms that are most effective in enabling gender-responsive good governance. Availability of data will remove the large gaps that obscure our knowledge of what works best, what doesn’t and why.
8. Meaningfully balance the achievements made vis a vis the plight of poor and marginalized women so we can build on what we have rather than on what we don’t have.
9. Relentlessly engage governments, regional organizations, and the international community to play their roles remains just as pertinent as it has been before.

L'énergie et l'égalité genre
Nous savons que la pauvreté énergétique oblige les femmes et les filles à chercher du bois pour le feu et du charbon de bois avant de faire la cuisine en Afrique. Le pétrole aussi pour éclairer la maison. Mais avec l'énergie moderne, le monde féminin surtout africain sera soulagé de sa souffrance quotidienne de porter sur la tête des fagots de bois pour la cuisine. L'homme étant, toujours préoccupé par d'autres affaires moins rentables, en rejetant sur la femme, les travaux ménagés se verra obliger de participer à l'art culinaire. Avec l'énergie renouvelable les données vont changer en faveur de la femme qui désormais sera libre de gagner du temps pour la cuisine qui devient plus simple et efficiente.Cette liberté conduira l'homme à préparer facilement un repas pour la famille. L'égalité genre sera donc renforcée par la distribution de l'énergie pour tous.