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Solar Saving Circles pilot: Empowering Rural Women in Tanzania and Beyond

Abstract

The Solar Saving Circles initiative from The Solar Foundation combines digital technology with traditional savings groups to empower entrepreneurial women in Sub-Saharan Africa with the utility and benefits of solar power and productive appliances to enable:

• A just transition to clean energy
• Financial sovereignty through increased income, digital skills and knowledge
• Community resilience including the ability to adapt and respond to climate change

Our vision is to invest in women’s savings groups (aka Chamas in E. Africa; Esusu in Nigeria; Upato in Tanzania, etc.) to enable rural women to choose their own solar energy resources on their own terms, and to demonstrate how access to renewable energy plus digital skills can help address the UN SDGs including SDG7: Universal access to clean and modern energy; SDG1: No Poverty; SDG4: Quality Education; SDG5: Gender Equality and SDG13: Climate Action.

By working with local NGO partners with whom we have established trusted relationships and utilizing NEDA Labs’ WashikaDAO Protocol — digital tech developed in Tanzania by local developers expressly for savings and loans groups — our plan is to launch this pilot in Spring 2025, with a pilot of 100 women in 5 savings groups in Tanzania. These initial groups are in partnership with a local NGO called JUKUMU, a network of 200 savings groups in Tanzania so there is potential to scale to thousands of women and to expand this model to our trusted partners in Uganda and Nigeria in the coming year.

We envision the role of The Solar Foundation as facilitating solar training and the procurement of solar power and productive appliances, seeding the saving circles’ community pools for the pilots, promoting cross group collaboration and sharing of ideas, supporting skills training and facilitating data collection and storytelling to help prove impact and scale this model.

How does this initiative support Public Goods?

“Without electricity, we can’t get jobs, health care, or skills. The success of electrification is foundational to everything.” — Ajay Banga, president of the World Bank

We believe that access to decentralized clean, renewable energy is a public good, especially in off-grid communities in Africa that have no access to electricity and yet are living in one of the best places for solar energy in the world. With our prior experience working on solar energy solutions for schools, hospitals and community centers, we have seen that even small solar solutions and solar-powered appliances in off-grid communities can have incredible ROI: Ripples of Impact. This project is designed to be regenerative, sustainable and to focus on empowering women who will then empower their families and communities.

With the cost of solar infrastructure decreasing an astonishing 90% over the past decade, now is the time to make small investments in a network of savings circles dedicated to solar energy and establish a cooperative model sharing ideas, stories and evidence of how access to solar and productive appliances like solar-powered lanterns, water pumps, drip irrigation, clean cooking and e-mobility can increase financial well-being so that the initial pilots in Tanzania can be scaled to women’s groups in Nigeria, Uganda and beyond.

How is it non-excludable?

Once the solar infrastructure is procured, the power from the sun is nonexcludable and free to all. One fun fact from Renewable Energy Africa is that Africa’s solar energy capacity is estimated at 60,000,000TWh/year. This is approximately 40% of the global total and makes Africa the most sun-rich continent in the world. Because the technology used in this pilot is decentralized and open source and our learnings will be shared anyone will be able to use this work and knowledge to further their communities.

How is it non-rivalrous?

Solar energy consumed by one person does not diminish the amount of solar energy available to all. Related to this, the Solar Savings Circle initiative advances the core principles and values of The Solar Foundation:

• A just transition to clean energy for ALL
• Energy independence for off-grid communities
• Holistic solutions, e.g. Solar + productive appliances, lead to new opportunities for financial sovereignty and community resilience
• Why does it need funding right now?

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), an estimated 600 million people in Africa, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, lack access to electricity, and over 900 million people lack access to clean cooking. While clean energy investment is growing in Africa, it is imperative to ensure a just transition to clean energy for all. We work to ensure off-grid, rural communities are not left behind and have access to the infrastructure that will empower them with free energy from the sun along with solar-powered productive appliances that will provide increasing community wealth, health and climate resilience.

Impact/Deliverables

For the initial 5 Solar Saving Circles in Tanzania:

• Solar Lanterns for 100 participants to enable the women to immediately start saving money and realizing the benefits of solar power. This will start their journey up the Solar Staircase Model shown above
• Solar system for JUKUMU’s community hub where the Solar Saving Circles will meet to ensure access to computers for training and to demonstrate home solar system in action
• Seed initial funding for each of the 5 groups ($1k per group)
• Solar training and bounties delivered via Impact Foundry by Atlantis to collect data (see feedback loop)
• A knowledge bank/repository for sharing case studies and ideas for how to utilize solar-powered appliances for business initiatives such as in agriculture, catering, charging stations, cold storage and more.
• Development of a sustainable, regenerative funding model. As we recoup our initial seed funding, then we will use the funds to start new Solar Saving Circles

Feedback Loop

We will be utilizing Impact Foundry by Atlantis, a platform designed to create and manage climate initiatives including offering bounties to engage users in meaningful actions, reward efforts and track impact. The bounties earned by participants for submitting stories, videos, testimonials, etc. will release funds into the saving circles’ community pools. This tool will also help us showcase real-world impact and gather participant feedback for how to continually improve the initiative. We will be sharing our learnings with the DAO and through socials and posts.

Recipient Address

0xB936d993379e5f52b6b8fdcDFA380508F037A420