Women in African Power

(WiAP)

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Interested in gender and renewable energy resources?

Advancing Women's Empowerment in the African Energy Sector

100 +

members

African Countries

Other Countries

Building knowledge. Informing action.

Women in African Power (WiAP) is a network of women and men active in the energy sector in Africa. Launched by USAID under Power Africa, the network is dedicated to advancing the role and representation of women within the energy sector across the continent. WiAP offers a regional platform for women’s networking, information exchange, professional development, and exposure to new business opportunities. From 2017-2020, under its AGENT partnership with USAID, IUCN facilitated the first phase of the network, contributing to membership growth, developing career coaching and networking opportunities, and generating and sharing new knowledge on gender and energy. Find resources from this phase on this page, and click below for the latest WiAP news.

A network incubated by Power Africa and IUCN.

Advancing Gender in the Environment (AGENT) is a ten-year collaboration between the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Office of Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (GenDev) that was established in 2014. The purpose of the grant is to increase the effectiveness of environment programming through robust gender integration and improve gender equality and women’s empowerment outcomes in a broad range of environmental sectors.

Examples of influence

Thought leadership in action.

The WiAP network shows that gender equality and women’s empowerment and leadership in the African power sector matters. During the years of IUCN’s network facilitation, WiAP supported women’s participation and networking toward becoming a powerful presence and voice shaping regional dialogues. Select examples of network facilitation results have included:

Organizers of major African energy sector fora recognize Power Africa and WiAP as leaders in knowing ‘who’s who’ among the women of the sector and work collaboratively to feature them at events.
WiAP mainstreams the message that women are critical to the growth and sustainability of Africa’s energy sector.
WiAP responds to a demand from women, donor communities, and supportive institutions to provide professional development assistance towards promoting women’s participation in the African energy sector.
WiAP’s knowledge products fill a demand for data to understand and measure progress on increasing the participation of women across the African energy sector — products cited by important stakeholders and key leaders, such as energy ministers.
WiAP’s communications are go-to sources of information for African women, their partners and other interested stakeholders.