Inside Zanzibar programme, turning marginalised women into solar power technicians

A growing network of women solar technicians in Zanzibar is helping to replace smoky kerosene lamps with clean energy, bringing light, skills, and new opportunities to rural communities.

• Zanzibar’s solar mamas are transforming rural life by replacing smoky kerosene lamps with clean solar home systems.
• Trained by Barefoot College International, the women technicians have already helped light more than 1,800 homes.
• The initiative improves community health, boosts women’s incomes, and shifts long-held gender norms.
• Despite funding constraints, the programme is expanding across Africa with trainees from Malawi, Somaliland, and the Central African Republic.

Known locally as the solar mamas, the women are part of a grassroots programme by Barefoot College International that is reshaping everyday life in the archipelago and beyond.

For years, life after sunset was a struggle for many families in Zanzibar. Half of the island’s two million residents still lack access to the national electricity grid.

Hamna Silima Nyange relied on oil lamps that filled her home with fumes as her eight children tried to study.

“The light was too weak,” she said, adding that the smoke “hurt my eyes”.

Everything changed when her neighbour, Tatu Omary Hamad, installed a simple solar system. With the help of a rooftop panel and LED bulbs, Nyange’s home went from darkness to reliable illumination.

“Today we have enough light,” she stated, according to a Euro News report.

Hamad is one of dozens of solar mamas trained through Barefoot College International’s six-month course. The programme selects middle-aged women, many with little or no formal education, from villages without electricity and equips them to install and maintain solar kits. Since its launch in Zanzibar, the initiative has lit up 1,845 homes.

According to Brenda Geofrey, director of the organisation’s Zanzibar campus, the focus on older women is deliberate.

“We want to train women who become change makers,” she said, explaining that they tend to be deeply rooted in their communities and less burdened by child care obligations.

The campus is now in its tenth year of operation. Before opening in Zanzibar, the programme sent trainees to India, where Barefoot College was founded.

One of those early beneficiaries, Khazija Gharib Issa, was an unemployed widow before becoming a master trainer.

“I got a job. I got a place to stay. Before, I did not have one,” she said.

The initiative goes beyond energy access. Health education is embedded within every programme offered by the college, which also trains women in tailoring, beekeeping, and sustainable agriculture.

Local health worker Jacob Dianga said replacing kerosene lamps had significantly improved well-being.

“Using kerosene has many problems,” he noted, citing eye irritation, lung damage, and fire risks. “Clean energy is very important. It helps protect our health.”

Despite its impact, the programme faces funding pressures as major donors in the United States and Europe scale back foreign aid. It also contends with cultural resistance in some communities, where women working as technicians challenge entrenched gender norms.

“In most African communities, women are pictured as somebody who is just at home,” Geofrey said.

For Issa, however, the community response has been transformed by visible results.

“People used to say this work is for men. They were surprised and laughed at me. But now they see how important my work is. I have become an example,” she said.