Gender Results Based Financing for Productive Use Appliances
Background
Lack of access to reliable energy affects women and girls most in energy-poor markets given their often inherently disadvantaged positions, exacerbating existing inequalities and presenting hurdles to improving their livelihoods. This includes limited freedom in how they spend their time, lack of access to opportunities to generate income, and an adverse impact on their health from their daily activities. Additionally, there is a widely observed underrepresentation of women in the ownership of productive assets that present both time saving and income-generating opportunities.
With the goal of moving intentional gender outcomes in energy access forward, funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), Shell Foundation, Odyssey Energy Solutions, and CrossBoundary Advisory are collaborating to design and pilot a gender results-based financing (RBF) program for the productive use appliance sector including clean cooking, in Sub-Saharan Africa. As the digital platform for a gender-focused RBF pilot, Odyssey will provide a centralized interface for appliance distributors to apply for the pilot and to share data for incentive-based disbursements.
Program Overview
The RBF pilot aims to improve gender outcomes by (1) incentivizing distributors of productive use appliances to target women, and (2) encouraging women to use productive use appliances to improve their livelihoods. This pilot will serve as a proof-of-concept to validate the value of positive gender outcomes that are produced by the adoption and use of productive use appliances and will provide crucial learnings for the sector. The pilot also aims to expand the addressable market for some of these appliance distributors by tapping into an often overlooked segment of the population for these appliances. This should enable appliance distributors to further accelerate their growth, both through new customer acquisition, and by unlocking new pools of de-risking capital that prioritize gender outcomes, which can further mobilize the commercial capital needed to scale their solutions. The geographic scope of this program includes allSub-Saharan African countries.
To learn more and apply, click here.
