Empower women to start and run energy products' enterprises

An excited lady shows her friend a business opportunity on her phone. [Getty Images]

Inequality, specifically gender inequality in Kenya, is entrenched and systemic and needs individual and collective action to roll back. Less than 0.1 per cent of the population own more wealth than the bottom 99.9 per cent, and women bear the brunt of this, according to Oxfam.In energy, a critical sector for advancing economic growth, women are still underrepresented in the energy product and service supply chain. 66.7 per cent of the population still use unclean cooking fuel, according to the 2019 census.

Gender inequalities are strongly connected to limited access to opportunities. On entrepreneurship, women face a number of constraints, the immediate one being starting and expanding a business. Other challenges include accessing credit, navigating emerging markets, accessing capacity building opportunities. All these are underpinned by patriarchal attitudes and norms, expectations around reproductive/domestic work, and concentration of power in the hands of (older) men.