“Women are key drivers of change”

“No sustainable development without gender equality” – UN Women

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by world leaders in 2015, embody a roadmap for progress that is sustainable and leaves no one behind.

Achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment is integral to each of the 17 UN SDGs: Only by ensuring the rights of women and girls across all the goals, will justice and inclusion be achieved as well as economies that work for all, sustaining our shared environment now and for future generations.

As South Africa celebrated Women’s Day on 9 August and Women’s Month during the whole of the August, it is only fitting that this edition of the Green Economy Express celebrates women all over the continent and features inspiring leading ladies in the green economy space.

Potential for South-on-South collaboration
Lisa Johansson is the Programme Manager for Green Finance at GreenCape, an NPO that drives the widespread adoption of commercially and economically viable green economy solutions in South Africa. Says Lisa: “Our focus is really about driving investments and job creation, utilising the green economy as the mechanism to drive prosperity and economic growth. The green finance team has the benefit of being cross-sectoral and able to tap into GreenCape’s deep sectoral expertise in renewable energy, both at utility scale side and embedded generation, sustainable mobility, water, sustainable agriculture, circular economy and waste management.”

She finds diversifying economic growth and creating jobs some of the most exciting opportunities that the green economy holds for Africa. “I think that there’s also a huge potential for South-on-South collaboration. Is the African continent growing together and actually collaborating? We do see this Global North flow of funds coming into Africa and South Africa and really, is there an opportunity for us to actually fund the transition to a greener economy, utilising each other, as well as doing a little bit more collaboration with regards to our climate tech and economic solutions?” [Read and watch full interview here.]

Clear emobility vision for Africa
Céleste Vogel is MD of eWAKA Mobility Limited in Kenya, Africa’s first platform for multi-modal electric micro-mobility fleets for commuting and commercial purposes. “Our vision for emobility on the continent is quite clear, “ she says, “the fact that two-wheelers have overtaken the transportation space in most African urban centres is already a sign that it is needed because of not only traffic, but also because of the increasing urban population. So for us, we believe that introducing state-of-the-art durable two-wheelers that are electric is not only about the two-wheelers themselves, but it’s also about a clean mode of transport and a mode of transport that can actually replace the use case that the motorcycles have made prevalent.”

So far, eWAKA has created over 600 rider jobs since it has been active in the last year and a half. She explains: “A lot of people focus just on the rider jobs, but in order to be able to create those rider jobs, one needs to be able to deploy the bikes. So, we’ve assessed that for every ebike deployed, we create about 2.2 jobs. It starts with the assembly of the bikes; we have a large technical team for maintenance and preventative and corrective maintenance of the bikes but also for repairs. Furthermore, each of our riders is estimated to support four to six people. So you can do the math.“ [Read and watch the full interview here.]

Market-leading energy traders
Another pioneer in the green economy space is Nigerian-born Cathy Oxby, Co-Founder and Chief Commercial Officer of Africa GreenCo, a renewable energy trader and service provider, headquartered in Lusaka and licenced to trade electricity in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia and, hopefully very soon, South Africa. Says Cathy: “We buy renewable energy from a portfolio of generators and take risk on our ability to sell that power profitably to a portfolio of consumers and through the markets of the Southern African Power Pool (SAPP), of which we were the first member to join under the Market Participant category, and we are still the only active non-asset owning trader. Our skilled trading team trades on the markets every day using our bespoke market-leading energy trading and risk management system.”

She continues: “We also use our skills and relationships to design and implement other power transactions. For example, we are currently importing power into Zambia for First Quantum Minerals to help address the dire shortage of power in Zambia due to the lowest water levels in Lake Kariba hydro reservoir for 20 years.”

According to Cathy, the regional approach is key to the GreenCo model: “This enables us to efficiently draw on different renewable energy sources across the region and mitigating the potential political risk of having all electrical eggs in one sovereign basket.” [Read and watch the full interview here.]

Trustworthy carbon markets
Bianca Gichangi is the Regional Lead for Africa at the Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity (VCMI) Initiative’s access strategy programme, focusing on the African countries but overall on capacity building initiatives on carbon markets.

Bianca explains: “The creation of VCMI was driven by an urgent need for credible and trustworthy carbon markets, as we’re moving towards net zero targets. VCMI is a not-for-profit organisation that has been created to ensure that voluntary carbon markets operate with high integrity, support the goals of the Paris Agreement and brings benefit for people and planet.”

Africa stands to benefit significantly from voluntary carbon markets according to Bianca: “as it unlocks new carbon finance revenue streams for communities and governments, promoting sustainable practices in agriculture, promoting deployment of low carbon technologies in energy, transport and also attracting investment into a wide variety of projects cutting across different sectors.” [Read the full interview here.]

Solid representation of women
In the light of Women’s Month, our interviewees were asked if they had a message regarding the role of women in the green energy transition and economy.

Africa GreenCo’s Cathy Oxby founded the company with another woman, CEO Ana Hajduka. “We are proud to be a women-led business with solid representation of women in all levels of the team,” Cathy states. “There are also a number of very impressive and prominent women within the stakeholders we work with.”

She adds: “While I also enjoy working with men and appreciate their more characteristic directness (which I share), having a diverse workforce and recognising and valuing different working styles and approaches to problem solving is essential and generally drives the best outcomes.”

Shaping the transition on the continent
“Women are key drivers of change in any sector” is the opinion of eWAKA’s Céleste Vogel. “And I think for Africa, this energy transition is absolutely of primordial importance. And women are usually at the centre of it, because you have access to energy in households that impacts women and children more. In the emobility space, there’s a huge focus on buses and on trains. But the reality is that half of the backbone of our industry is really the 50% of the population that is women. And so, being able to have women be part of the design of the vehicles and the direction that this energy transition will take is very important.”

She continues: “You don’t even have to do much to encourage women to be part of this. Just in our company, 60% of the staff is women, and it’s really not intentional. It just so happens that there’s a lot of women who are trained in these areas, in engineering, in technical spaces and sales. And just being able to bring women to be part of the decision-making is very important in the way we’re going to shape this transition on the continent.”

Unique opportunity to be empowered
Bianca Gichangi says her message is “that women need to continue supporting each other. This space, in terms of energy transition is unique, and it is a unique opportunity for women to be empowered, to get into new sectors and new aspects of climate change that were not traditionally there, but are now also an opportunity for them to come in, contribute to policy, contribute to projects that are actually leading to renewable energy, leading to community benefits, and leading to wider knowledge on the subject matter.”

According to GreenCape’s Lisa Johansson, “At a high level we can observe the disproportionate impact of environmental degradation and climate change on vulnerable populations, specifically women. In response to this, I think there’s an opportunity for a gendered approach in the transition to a green, resilient economy. This transition needs to not only be socially just, but economically inclusionary, representative and empowering for women. This means engaging women as full and active participants in the transition to the green economy—as workers, business owners, entrepreneurs, investors, producers and solution providers.”

– This article first appeared in the GREEN ECONOMY EXPRESS, issued by Africa’s Green Economy Summit.