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June 19, 2020
Bringing clean energy access to last mile communities in Uganda once seemed an impossible hurdle. It’s now become the shared goal of three diverse organizations.
This is just one story of how thinking outside the box and working together in partnership can result in amazing results.
The renewable energy sector in Uganda is relatively young but with the great potential. The government is progressive and recognizes the critical role of decentralized energy distribution as part of the rural electrification roadmap. The enabling regulatory and policy environment and market opportunity has attracted most of the large players in the solar sector who have set up operations here in the past years.
However, there are several challenges that the sector and the solar companies face – the primary being access to skilled human capital. Recognizing this challenge as an inverted opportunity, Enlight Institute has set up its business model to fill the human capital gap by training local youth in the different specific skills required by these companies. This triggered a collaboration with BRAC on a small pilot to assess if a focus on training girls in solar sales skills would enable them to find jobs in the sector.
BRAC in Uganda has established the Empowerment and Livelihood for Adolescents (ELA) program that targets adolescent girls between the ages of 13 and 21, especially those who are out of school. The primary goal of the program is to help the girls achieve greater economic and social empowerment and become agents of change in their families and communities.
BRAC provides safe spaces, called ‘adolescents clubs’, where they are able to exercise their freedom to express themselves, interact with peers and mentors, and learn about critical social issues including sexual and reproductive health, early marriage, gender-based violence and drug abuse.
This pool of pre-sensitized young women was the recruiting pool for Enlight Institute, from which 22 girls were trained to become solar sales agents.
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