Dr. Melania Chiponda, who heads Shine Collaborate, an international feminist network and non-profit organization dedicated to promoting gender-equitable solutions in the areas of climate sustainability, community support and energy access, noted: «Women are the first to feel the impact of deforestation and climate change due to their social responsibilities, which leads to the fact that energy poverty is perceived differently by men and women».
For many women across the African continent, the lack of modern energy resources means long hours spent searching for firewood and water, exposure to harmful smoke from campfires, and lack of time for study, paid work, leadership, and recreation. Nearly 600 million people in Africa still do not have stable access to electricity, and 77% of the world's energy-hungry population lives in sub-Saharan Africa. Although these data are often mentioned, the report focuses on a hidden problem: women and girls bear the brunt of energy poverty through unpaid family care work, fuel harvesting, and cooking with polluting biomass.
The report examines the worrying gender inequalities on the African continent. In sub-Saharan Africa, women perform more than three times as many unpaid household care responsibilities as men. In countries such as Tanzania, Ethiopia, Mali, and Rwanda, women spend hours every day collecting fuel, delivering water, and doing household chores due to insufficient access to energy resources. The consequences of this are very serious. About 700,000 deaths in Africa in 2019 were caused by indoor air pollution due to the use of biomass for cooking, and this mainly affected women and children who spend more time near cooking fires.
Nevertheless, the report's data indicate that investments in environmentally friendly cooking technologies and stable electricity supply can significantly reduce women's time costs and open up opportunities for them to earn money, education, and participate in public life. Programs to introduce improved stoves in Tanzania and Kenya have shown significant reductions in the time spent collecting fuel and cooking, allowing women to devote more time to productive economic activities.
The release of the report coincided with increased support for the Mission 300 initiative, a joint project of the African Development Bank and the World Bank aimed at providing electricity to 300 million people in Africa by 2030. Experts, appreciating the scale of this program, warn that large-scale investments in energy can exacerbate existing inequalities if gender issues are not specifically integrated into the planning, financing and execution stages.
The document suggests that the African Development Bank, Governments and development partners take five main steps. These include the introduction of gender-sensitive monitoring systems to understand who exactly benefits from energy investments and how they are distributed; ensuring the meaningful participation of women in energy management and decision-making at both national and local levels; and promoting environmentally friendly cooking methods as a key element in energy financing and development strategies. In addition, the report calls for the creation of accessibility mechanisms such as subsidies and community financing models that address the specific challenges faced by female-headed households. It is also recommended to institutionalize participatory approaches that place rural women, women with disabilities, and women from conflict-affected areas at the center of energy planning.
The report predicts that by 2030, more than 220 million women and girls in sub-Saharan Africa could be living in extreme poverty, with almost half of them suffering from food shortages. According to supporters, today's decisions in the field of energy financing will be key in changing these forecasts.
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