10081836Women Entrepreneurs Powering Communities with Productive Use of Renewable Energy in TanzaniaClosedFeasibility StudiesInnovate UKAffordable, reliable, and efficient electricity increases productivity, generates jobs, and enhances living conditions and socioeconomic success. Despite this, 774 million people globally lack access to energy, with 597 million of those individuals living in sub-Saharan Africa and women and children disproportionately bearing the brunt of its negative impacts. They are disproportionately impacted by energy poverty because women can spend up to 10 hours a week collecting fuel for energy use, often also leading to young girls being removed from school for firewood collection and preventing women from participating in other income-generating activities. Walking great distances for fuel, leaves women vulnerable to physical attacks. Cooking with these fuels, and inhaling the toxic smoke, endangers women's and children's health. In Tanzania, 38 million people don't have access to electricity, 30 million people live below the extreme poverty line, and women are 28% likely to have less opportunities as men. Solar Sister trains and supports women to become entrepreneurs to build sustainable businesses in their own communities, with the opportunity to earn an income and communities to benefit from enhanced climate resilience, food security and the financial, education, and health benefits of clean energy. To date, Solar Sister has recruited, trained and supported more than 9,000 women entrepreneurs who have gone on to mitigate more than 1.2M CO2e, impacting the lives of more than 3.8M beneficiaries across Nigeria, Tanzania and Kenya. Africa Power develops, deploys and sells off-grid solar solutions for Africa and is active in Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. It has developed a range of productive-use-of-Energy (PUE) products, some of which were developed under EC6\. This project is catered at the nexus of women's empowerment, energy poverty, and climate resilience. Through this partnership, Solar Sister's existing last-mile distribution networks in Tanzania will be trialled to drive access to appliances and productive use technologies (PUE) to last-mile communities using a gender inclusive approach. Solar Sister's tried and tested business model for distributing innovative renewable PUE products that can improve climate resilience and food security (using fishing lights, solar-powered food dryers, mills, refrigerators and clean cooking solutions). We will develop new avenues, and new software, to provide credit to low-income consumers to ensure our solutions are affordable to those who need it most. This process will simultaneously address multiple drivers of climate adaptation, mitigation and food security in sub-Saharan Africa: poverty, gender inequality, lack of innovative technologies, and food insecurity caused by climate change.