Programme: Turning marginalised women into solar power technicians

A growing network of women solar technicians in Zanzibar is helping to replace smoky kerosene lamps with clean energy, bringing light, skills, and new opportunities to rural communities.

Zanzibar’s solar mamas are transforming rural life by replacing smoky kerosene lamps with clean solar home systems.
Trained by Barefoot College International, the women technicians have already helped light more than 1,800 homes.
The initiative improves community health, boosts women’s incomes, and shifts long-held gender norms.
Despite funding constraints, the programme is expanding across Africa with trainees from Malawi, Somaliland, and the Central African Republic.

Known locally as the solar mamas, the women are part of a grassroots programme by Barefoot College International that is reshaping everyday life in the archipelago and beyond.

For years, life after sunset was a struggle for many families in Zanzibar. Half of the island’s two million residents still lack access to the national electricity grid.

Hamna Silima Nyange relied on oil lamps that filled her home with fumes as her eight children tried to study.