Out with the smoke for Migori women

The energy sector has been a male-dominated for long. Women, especially in rural Kenya, have inadvertently been viewed only as end-users in their societal deemed roles of cooking, or in lighting the homes.

To change the narrative, several women through self-help groups, have stepped up, leaving a green mark in the energy sector. Millicent Odira, a resident of Opapo village in Migori County is one such woman.

Ms Odira, a small-scale farmer-turned clean energy entrepreneur, has become a formidable actor in the sector through her improved cook stoves.

She was catapulted into the business after seeking a stable income stream through other jobs such as farming and selling second-hand clothes (mitumba) without success.

“With barely rewarding returns from my mitumba business, I partly depended on my husband, this was unsustainable,” recounts the mother of six.

In 2008, with support from a non-governmental organisation, Ms Odira alongside other women, were trained on how to assemble and install improved cook stoves. This was the turnaround in her life. She started by installing stoves in her locality, slowly graduating to institutions after the Migori County Department of Social Services linked her to the Improved Cooking Stoves Association in 2013.

“We did the math and realised we could save up to 60 per cent of our cost on improved jikos. They burn on less fuel and are smokeless. When we sold the idea to institutions and hotels around, they embraced it fully,” she narrates.

She adds: “It’s after gaining skills on the installation of institutional improved cook stoves that I embraced the clean energy business.”

Ms Odira has since gained more skills in making a rocket stove, incinerators and boilers, which has helped her educate her children and build a family house.

“Our stoves will help reverse afforestation. They will also reduce tension in homes as more money spent on fuel is a recipe for gender-based violence,” says Ms Odira, observing that they use heat-retaining clay and fire-proof cement.

Closer in Rongo town, is Caroline Akinyi, a member of Ratat CBO. She too, has ventured into the energy business through her briquette business. When we meet her at her workshop, an electric starter that acts as an automatic briquette-making machine, roars to life churning out rolls of the fuel.

“We saw a lot of sawdust in local mills and carpenters’ shops go to waste. Meanwhile, charcoal prices were high at Sh2,000 for a 90kg sack; we realised briquettes could fetch half the price,” Ms Akinyi explains about the product made out of coal and sawdust.

They started making briquettes and selling among themselves in 2010. They later got a loan and bought the machine, which produces a tonne of briquettes a day.

“Sawdust is readily available; the only challenge is getting the binding agent (a starch-based agent that forms an adhesive bond around the briquette) that we source from Nakuru. We have scaled up to include hotels and institutions as our market,” Ms Akinyi says.

Sugarcane husks

She notes that compared to charcoal, briquettes are environmentally safer as they recycle sawdust and sugarcane husks are smokeless and spark-free when burning, making them non-toxic.

“We have branded our briquettes and sell them in kadogo (small) packages of Sh20, to attract more customers,” she says.

The two women are among 400 women entrepreneurs under the Women in Energy Enterprises in Kenya (Week II) project by Practical Action spread across seven counties including Kisumu, Siaya, Kakamega, Homa Bay, Migori, Nairobi and Makueni. The renewable energy project in collaboration with Energia International, aims to strengthen women’s capacity to effectively participate in, and benefit from the energy markets as actors and beneficiaries.

“In Kenya, like in most of the world, the advance in the energy sector has been slow because men dominate it, we need to empower women economically to be users and distributors of clean energy,” says Sharon Atieno, a Gender Advocacy officer at Practical Action.

Women entrepreneurs

“Granted the obstacles women and girls face in developing countries as they spend a large part of their day collecting fuel wood, which translates not only into perpetuating poverty and inequality, but also into lost opportunities for education and remunerated labour,” she adds.

Week II has identified 400 women entrepreneurs who undergo economic empowerment training and workshops to help improve on their skills and product and scale up their business through a link up to markets.

“While at it, we hope to address effects of climate change by offering healthier and safe practices through harnessing transformational effects of clean affordable energy and reduce avoidable deaths caused by smoke from indoor stoves and fires,” says Ms Atieno.

Energy business

A project mentor introduced Ms Odira to Week II project in February last year. She has since attended training on marketing and networking, record keeping and productive uses of energy.

With the future looking promising, she has formally registered the business - Mildra Green Energy and Technology.

“Licensing of my enterprise has enabled people to gain trust in my energy business, helping me get referrals across the country,” she says.

Making an upward of Sh100,000 per month, Ms Odira now boasts of a market reach in Bomet, Migori, Homa Bay, Kericho, Narok, Kisumu and Kilifi and the neighbouring countries of Uganda and Tanzania.

In furthering their agenda, the organization’s partnership with the Ministry of Energy immensely contributed in coming up with the Gender Policy in Energy document that will offer enabling environment for women in the sector. The document launched in 2019, will also offer access to financial institutions that previously played hardball due to unclear structures.

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