Energy is a basic need and a component of all productive processes. It is essential for development. Sustainable energy sources can improve levels of welfare, increase standards of living, and liberate people from darkness and isolation and at the same time, enabling them to have access to equal opportunities.
Due to the strategic importance of energy in achieving sustainable development, the ECOWAS Centre for Renewable Energy and Efficiency (ECREEE), has initiated the Regional Off-Grid Electrification Project (ROGEP) covering 15 ECOWAS and 4 Sahelian (Cameroon, Central Africa Republic, Chad and Mauritania) Countries.
As part of the ECOWAS and World Bank gender policy, ECREEE actively engaged to develop a Gender Strategy to enable mainstreaming gender into the different project’s activities. This is to ensure that the project contributes to closing gender gaps, and provides opportunities for equal participation of women and men as beneficiaries at all levels.
In this sense, activities were designed specifically targeting women´s priorities and needs. Women will be given the opportunity to participate in all the activities with the ultimate goal to involve women to the extent of the decision-making process”.
The project will focus specifically on women in order to promote gender equality. This will reduce existing disparities, serving as a catalyst for promotion of gender equality and creating a constituency for changing the status quo. Women-specific initiatives can create an empowering space for women and act as an important incubator for ideas and strategies than can be transferred to conventional interventions.
