Beyond the Checkbox: Gender action plans that work in Africa’s minigrid sector

At the ARE Energy Access Investment Forum (EAIF) 2026, RMI and the Africa Minigrids Program (AMP) brought together women leaders, practitioners, and partners for a dedicated space to connect, exchange lessons, and advance gender inclusion in Africa’s clean energy transition. A clear message emerged from the session: women are entrepreneurs, decision-makers, and innovators whose leadership can strengthen project outcomes and accelerate more equitable energy access. From gender action planning and inclusive procurement to women-led energy kiosks, clean energy fellowships, and targeted support for female-headed households, AMP and its partners are embedding gender across project design, implementation, and institutional priorities.

In support of this work, the AMP regional team launched a Technical Working Group on Gender and Gender Action Plans to facilitate cross-country learning and strengthen gender-responsive implementation across AMP countries.

This article highlights impact and progress reported from a few AMP countries, tips for effective gender action, and where AMP goes from here.

1. AMP Case Studies Highlighted at EAIF: Madagascar and Nigeria

1.1 Madagascar: Gender-Transformative Skills, Jobs, and Women-Led Energy Services

Madagascar’s experience exemplifies how AMP country projects can support women as technical actors, entrepreneurs, and service providers in renewable energy. Building on the Powering Gender Equality initiative, AMP Madagascar supported women’s training in the installation and maintenance of domestic photovoltaic systems, alongside entrepreneurship and leadership. This opened a pathway for women to participate in energy maintenance and service delivery roles that are often perceived as male-dominated.

Madagascar’s experience also shows that technical training alone is insufficient. Women’s participation in PV installation and maintenance challenged local perceptions about what constitutes “men’s work” and raised practical concerns related to women’s mobility, care responsibilities, and safety. In response, the project adopted a gender-transformative approach: local authorities were engaged to legitimize women’s participation, community dialogue-built acceptance, and spouses and community members were involved to strengthen support for women’s new roles.

1.2 Nigeria: Gender Mainstreaming Across Project Systems

Nigeria illustrates how gender mainstreaming can be built into the systems that shape project delivery. At EAIF, AMP Nigeria and the Rural Electrification Agency (REA) shared how gender considerations are being integrated across the project life cycle, including design, procurement, market research, development, and operations.

Practical examples include procurement incentives for companies with female leadership or women in the workforce, dedicated forums to gather women’s input during market research, and deliberate efforts to ensure women speak directly in consultations rather than being represented by male household members.

Nigeria’s experience also demonstrates the importance of institutional ownership. The REA is working to integrate Gender Equality and Social Inclusion as a core institutional priority. During AMP’s gender training, the Nigeria team emphasized alignment with Nigeria’s national gender policy, the role of the REA gender unit, and the presence of a gender focal person within the implementing agency. The team also referred to gender-responsive beneficiary targeting, including female-headed households, women-led MSMEs (micro-, small-, and medium-size enterprises), and marginalized groups.

Additionally, Nigeria’s experience shows that gender-responsive procurement requires continued support for women-led companies. At EAIF, attendees noted that participation by women-led companies in procurement processes remains low, highlighting the need to complement procurement incentives with stronger outreach, capacity building, access to information, financing, and business development support for women-led energy enterprises.

2. GAP Structure and Methodological Notes

AMP’s experience shows that a Gender Action Plan (GAP) is most useful when it is treated as a project management tool rather than a compliance document. A GAP identifies priority gender gaps, defines actions to address those gaps, clarifies responsibilities, sets indicators and timelines, and supports monitoring, learning, and accountability. It should be part of core project implementation, not an annex that is revisited only during reporting.

2.1 Six Enabling Conditions for GAP Implementation

AMP’s technical reviews and training materials identify six enabling conditions that determine whether GAPs can move from paper to practice.

2.2 Monitoring What Matters

AMP’s training materials emphasize that counting women in electrified households or connected businesses is insufficient. A household connection does not show whether women use electricity, whether appliances meet their needs, whether they control income from productive use, or whether they experience improved safety, reduced time burden, or greater decision-making power.

For this reason, AMP has promoted Tier 0 gender indicators as a common baseline for country projects. These include:

• Number and percentage of women-headed households newly connected to the minigrid
• Number and type of time-saving electric appliances used by women in beneficiary households
• Number and percentage of enterprises, cooperatives, or groups using minigrid electricity for productive use, disaggregated by gender of the owner, manager, or group leader
• Number and type of social facilities connected, such as health centers and schools

2.3 Summary Table: Country Examples and Good Practices

3. Gaps and Challenges

AMP country projects have made important progress in recognizing gender equality as part of minigrid development. However, the technical reviews, Technical Working Group (TWG) sessions, and training discussions show that implementation remains uneven. Several recurring challenges need to be addressed for GAPs to deliver measurable results.

1. GAP design and operational clarity
   Many GAPs include relevant gender commitments, but some are difficult to implement because actions are too broad, indicators are unclear, targets and baselines are missing, timelines are not specified, or too many institutions are listed as responsible.
2. Integration into core project systems
   A recurring finding across AMP reviews is that gender actions are often stronger in stand-alone GAP documents than in the core project architecture. When gender is not reflected in ProDocs, results frameworks, annual workplans, procurement documents, feasibility studies, ESIA/ESMPs, MPPs, digital systems, or project implementation report (PIR) templates, GAP implementation remains peripheral.
3. Institutional ownership and capacity
   GAP implementation often depends on one person, such as a consultant, gender specialist, or Gender Focal Point. While these roles are essential, they are not sufficient. Gender mainstreaming requires shared responsibility across the PMU, implementing agencies, safeguards teams, procurement teams, technical specialists, M&E officers, developers, and partners.
4. Budget and resources
   Budget remains a common constraint. Several country reviews identify limited dedicated resources for GAP implementation or weak tracking of gender-related expenditures. When gender actions are not costed, they are more likely to be postponed, absorbed into broader activities without follow-up, or implemented only when external support is available.
5. Monitoring and measurement
   Monitoring remains one of the most important areas for improvement. Many projects report sex-disaggregated participation data, such as the number of women trained or consulted. This is necessary, but it does not capture whether women actually benefit from electrification. AMP projects must track the quality and outcome of participation for a more complete understanding of economic and social gains.
6. Social norms and backlash
   The Madagascar and Eswatini cases show that gender-responsive interventions can face resistance when they challenge established gender roles. Women’s participation in technical training, energy maintenance, cooperative leadership, or enterprise ownership can raise concerns within households and communities if local norms are not addressed early.

4. Vision and Where We Go from Here

AMP’s next phase of gender work will focus on making GAP implementation more systematic, measurable, and embedded across country projects. The objective is not only to ensure that every country has a GAP, but to ensure that GAPs actively shape how minigrid projects are designed, procured, financed, implemented, and monitored.

1. Treat GAPs as living tools
   GAPs should evolve as projects move from design to implementation. Where country teams identify new opportunities, generate new results, or find that original actions are unclear, the GAP should be updated. Malawi and Madagascar show why this matters: important gender-responsive or transformative activities emerged during implementation and were reflected in monitoring and reporting, even if they were not fully captured in the original GAP.
2. Embed gender into routine project processes
   Gender mainstreaming should be integrated into the processes that already drive project delivery. This includes procurement, feasibility studies, ESIA/ESMP processes, tariff analysis, productive-use strategies, Minigrid Pilot Plans, digital systems, stakeholder engagement, and PIR reporting. This approach improves efficiency because gender analysis and sex-disaggregated data are generated through existing activities rather than added as separate exercises. It also strengthens accountability because consultants, developers, and implementing partners have clear gender requirements in their scopes of work and deliverables.
3. Strengthen gender-responsive monitoring
   AMP should continue moving from participation counts to indicators that measure access, use, benefits, and empowerment. Tier 0 indicators provide a common baseline, but country teams should also track outcomes such as income generation, job quality, time savings, safety, affordability, mobility, decision-making, and leadership. Stronger monitoring will demonstrate not only how many women are reached, but how minigrid investments affect women’s lives, livelihoods, and opportunities. It will also help country teams identify bottlenecks earlier and adjust implementation before reporting deadlines.
4. Resource GAP implementation through budgets and partnerships
   Country teams should identify practical resource options for GAP implementation. This includes dedicated budget lines where possible, but also mainstreaming gender into existing workplans, TORs, technical studies, and procurement processes. Partnerships with women’s organizations, cooperatives, VSLAs, local authorities, financial institutions, training centers, and private-sector actors can also provide expertise, outreach, facilitation, in-kind support, and co-financing opportunities.
5. Continue TWG and peer learning
   The TWG demonstrates that country teams benefit from practical exchange on what works, what is difficult, and how other teams are solving similar problems. Future sessions should continue to focus on implementation pathways. This means documenting the steps, partnerships, tools, data systems, risks, and decisions that led to impact. Peer learning can support replication across countries while allowing adaptation to local contexts.

The next phase of AMP’s gender work is about making gender mainstreaming visible in the systems that shape delivery, from procurement and financing to pilots, data, and reporting.

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