Project Description

This was a pilot project on mainstreaming gender approaches in SCODE’s existing energy projects with goal of improving the livelihoods of people in Kenya by supporting the adoption of appropriate clean energy products and services that would be used for domestic and commercial purposes.

This meant that at each stage of the project cycle, the gender mainstreaming team would make specific interventions into the process, to ensure that gender concerns were not inadvertently overlooked.

Key objectives:

  •  To provide more efficient, cleaner and affordable market-driven cooking, heating and lighting devices that reduce indoor air pollution (IAP).
  • To establish a credit line with Eb-F that will enable an increasing number of poor households acquire and use clean energy products and services that reduce IAP.
  • To demonstrate the potential and replicability of appropriate clean energy interventions in reducing IAP and improving livelihoods.

Key results:

  • 130 small or medium enterprise (SME) identified and trained on undertaking energy audits.
  • Capacity of SCODE energy resource centre to serve the project beneficiaries and partners strengthened.
  • Appropriate, market-driven socially acceptable interventions that reduce IAP introduced
  • 130 SMES trained on fabrication, marketing, installation and after sales service
  • An An energy credit line established by Eb-F

Lessons learned:

  • Many micro finance institutions (MFI) have still not bought into the concept of financing energy projects and for those that have attempted; they ended up putting so many stringent features that made it even harder for entrepreneurs to have access to.
  • During the implementation of the project, SCODE was also strengthening its institutional capacity to mainstream gender in all her energy projects and policies as well. As such, the organization needed a gender expert to guide activities geared towards achieving the set objective. The fact that the gender expert was not with the organization full time may have slowed the project a bit.