‘I want to tackle it in a big way’: Meet the Nigerian women spearheading solar projects
The African country has the lowest access to electricity in the world. Women and girls are bearing the brunt of energy poverty.
32-year-old green energy entrepreneur Yetunde Fadeyi will never forget what inspired her to start a clean energy company in Nigeria.
As a six-year-old, Fadeyi’s best friend, Fatima, was killed by carbon monoxide poisoning in her Lagos home, along with her father and pregnant mother.
“She often came over for sleepovers. But that day she didn’t,” says Fadeyi. “It was the time that they were stealing people’s generators, so they kept [the generator] in an enclosed area and by the time it was morning they were dead.”
Petrol-powered generators like the one Fatima’s family had are valuable assets because of the country’s energy problems, making them targets of theft if left outside the house.
More children die from air pollution - mainly inside the home - in Nigeria than in any other African country, and Fadeyi made it her life’s calling to end the energy poverty causing such deaths.
After a childhood in Lagos plagued by intermittent electricity, a degree in chemistry and training in solar panel installation, Fadeyi started Renewable Energy and Environmental Sustainability (REES). The non-profit is dedicated to climate advocacy and providing clean energy to poor communities in rural Nigeria.
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Bringing solar energy to Nigeria’s poorest homesSince its inception in 2017, REES Africa has provided solar energy to over 6,000 people in the poorest parts of Nigeria, funded by grants and philanthropic donations.
It supplies solar microgrids, which generate energy through solar panels and store them in battery banks for distribution. The small grids bring high quality, cheap and constant power to up to 100 homes each, powering light bulbs, radios, sockets and other low energy appliances.
Fadeyi says that energy companies don’t see any potential for profit in poor and marginalised communities. With around 40 per cent of Nigerians living below the national poverty line, it’s up to companies like Fadeyi’s to fill the gap for now.
Solar energy is transforming women’s lives in NigeriaIn the village of Aba-Oje, a rural outpost in southwest Nigeria, 76-year-old community chief Muritala Ojeleye says life has changed completely since REES Africa installed a solar grid in 2018.
“We had not had light here since the history of this village - not even electric poles. Life was very difficult for us,” he says.
Mary Ojo, a 46-year old trader, agrees. She has given birth to her five children by the light of a kerosene lamp.
“The closest hospital here is two to three hours away,” she says. “The midwives deliver babies here, and [previously] if it happened in the night they used atupa [kerosene lanterns] to see well.”
Thanks to the electricity, she can now work longer and earn more money because she doesn’t have to stop working at nightfall.
It’s making differences like this, especially for women in the communities she works in, that drive Fadeyi.
“Each time we do field work, we end up crying,” she says. “I'm literally envisioning what's happening now in the dark in some of these places.
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