SOLAR Sister, a social enterprise has embarked on training and empowerment programme targeted at women in the rural areas on sales and marketing of solar and renewable energy across the country.
The enterprise which has its presence in Uganda, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Nigerian is targeting women driven clean energy revolution to spread light and opportunities in Africa.
During a dinner in honour of their entrepreneurs in Abuja, the Country Manager of Solar Sister, Olasimbo Sojinrin said their aim was to provide access to energy which there is none or where 5 hours electricity per day is not achievable.
She said some of their entrepreneurs who are about 1522 in those areas have actually made life easy for the people, and some of them have N1 million worth of investment, and by 2020, their number is expected to hit 2500.
“Solar sister is an organisation formed to empower women entrepreneurs to distribute clean energy products in their societies and communities. We are interested in providing access in areas where we have no energy, areas where energy is a big challenge, where they have like 4 hours of electricity per day, you see that they now have to resort to various ways of lighting their home, you now start seeing dangerous and harmful fuel like kerosene lanterns and candles and so many hazardous effects from using those dirty fuel.
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“So clean energy is a way to mitigate that and mitigate climate change as well and get people to reap all the benefits of clean energy in their communities.
“Since we started, this year will be our 5th year, we have had 1522 registered entrepreneurs, of them, 82 per cent are women p, we omen are our target audience and it’s deliberate because we believe that women are the managers of energy at home, they are responsible for how the house is lit and how food is cooked and so they should be the right drivers of this, so some are the target and we know that when women are economically empowered, the resources are used for the entire household, so the business part of it which is entrepreneurship, we have the women focus, but the products themselves have a focus for the entire community.
“We are working with the trusted and quality verified manufacturers in Nigeria and with our number and volume, we have been able to negotiate great prices, so our entrepreneurs have access to the best prices in their community, so they don’t need to travel anywhere to get the product.
“The challenges we experience include mobility, because of these areas are in remote areas, so for us, one of our values is that tenacity regardless of where that community is, we want to ensure that there is a solar sister entrepreneur there, so all the challenges that have to do with running a remote operation which you JNI will be mostly transportation are the things that we face, also movement of products like any other logistics company, we also face similar challenge.
“Before 2020, I want to grow that number from 1522 to 2500, that is one of the targets, one of the things looking at, I am also looking at getting entrepreneurs in the 36 states, those are the two things am focusing on to make sure that at least there is somebody servicing people in the community with energy access.
“A minimum entrepreneur has a business volume of about N800,000 per annum, we have N2 million from Plateau State from a really remote community”, she noted.
The Training Manager of Solar Sister, Chioma Ome said their greatest challenges were getting the women together to teach them something that wasn’t familiar with, and the ability to communicate in the language they could understand.
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“We would have encountered the challenge of language, but the way we surmounted it was that we have our business development associate, they have the ability to communicate in the local languages of the entrepreneurs, so our challenge would be the commitment of these women to leave their busy schedule and come in their clusters to have the training.
“The training is once a month, so basically our challenge has been having them get committed to this training, but we try as much as we can when they are coming on board, we let them know that they will be having their training once in a month.
“We still expect more commitment from the women, they don’t pay for the training, it’s our word to them, to help them, support them and to help them grow their business. Typically, every woman feels that she knows how to do business, but this training provides them proper business education.
“We have a one-year business training module that we run every month, Agency modules, record keeping modules, sales and marketing modules so that these entrepreneurs can easily interface with their customers and do good business with their customers”.
One of the entrepreneurs, Mrs Esther Peter, from Kaduna State, said she had benefited a lot from the training, as she has been able to pay her children School fee from the profit she made from selling the products.
“I have learnt so much in this company with their help, I have gained a lot, I joined the business in August last year, I have made a lot of money from the business, with Solar Sister, I have been able to pay my children school fees, from the small profit am making from the sales, I have been able to carter for my financial needs”, Mrs Peter said.
and then