ECREEE and AFREA join forces to mainstream gender into energy development in West Africa at the AFREA Gender and Energy Regional Workshop

The Gender  and Energy Program of the Africa Renewable Energy and Access Program (AFREA), the World Bank, and the Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP) jointly organized a 3 – day capacity building workshop on integrating gender into energy operations, from 7th – 9th April 2014, in Dakar, Senegal.

The workshop brought together over 50 participants from West, East and Southern Africa, Europe and the United States. The three day workshop was structured around i) a day focused on the country level experiences and ii) two days of training. Development partners, ECREEE, ENERGIA, Danish Embassy, UN Women and SNV Netherlands Development Organization, presented on their work on gender mainstreaming in energy access.

Amongst others, participants were impacted with the knowledge and skills for identifying gender issues in fields relating to energy access, renewable energy and energy efficiency, energy policy, electricity transmission and distribution; steps in conducting gender assessments; developing action plans; and formulating monitoring and evaluation frameworks.

The AFREA Gender and Energy Program has been working in Benin, Mali and Senegal to build the capacities of government officials and energy professionals to mainstream gender into their energy operations since 2009. With the opportunities for synergy existing between the two programs, ECOW-GEN and AFREA, an agreement was reached at the meeting to join forces in furthering the objectives of the two programs. AFREA and ECREEE will be collaborating specifically in the areas of networking and knowledge exchange.

In the coming months, ECREEE will be liaising with AFREA to engage the ECOW-GEN network members in the AFREA e-learning course on gender mainstreaming in energy access. The e-learning course will last for a period of 4- 5 weeks after which participants will be awarded with certificates of completion.

Click here to join the ECOW-GEN Network. The network is open to individuals and institutions (governmental, inter-governmental, non-governmental organizations, civil societies, academic, etc.) working on, or interested in, gender and/or energy within the West African region.