Measuring gender equality in energy: lessons from the WOCEWA project

You can only steer what you measure, and the place of women in West African energy had never been measured. By carrying out for CEREEC/ECREEE, with support from IDRC, the first assessment of the Gender Equality Index (GEI) for sustainable energy SMEs across the twelve ECOWAS countries, CRAD turned an intuition shared by the entire sector (women are under-represented) into a hard, accountable figure: a regional score of 48.1 out of 100. That number is not a slogan. It is a decision-making instrument. It tells us not only where the region stands, but above all where to act, in what order and at what cost. This article explains why a composite index reveals what no anecdote can show, and why that changes the way donors allocate their funding.

A strategic sector, a statistical blind spot

Sustainable energy attracts a growing share of development finance in West Africa. Yet the place of women in the sector's entrepreneurship remained largely unknown: how many firms do they lead, which segments do they reach, what structural obstacles hold back their growth? At the global level, the data exists and it is stark. According to IRENA, women hold only about 32% of full-time jobs in renewable energy, against an all-sector average of 43%, and their share collapses as roles become technical or decision-making: 28% in STEM occupations, 22% in medium-skilled jobs such as installation, and just 19% in management and boards. The sector employs women mainly where it decides the least. But those global averages said nothing about West Africa, and even less about the fabric of SMEs that actually delivers energy access in the region. Without a local, quantified answer, any inclusion policy advances blind.

The WOCEWA project (Women and Clean Energy in West Africa), led by CEREEC/ECREEE, the ECOWAS Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency, with financial support from IDRC, was designed to fill that gap. The aim was not merely to produce a figure, but to build a reproducible tool, an index, capable of informing decisions and tracking progress over time. CRAD carried out its founding assessment: a mission of roughly 200,000 USD within a regional programme whose total budget approaches 1.14 million USD over 2024-2027.

An adapted method, not an imported one

Transposing a framework designed elsewhere without adjusting it to the African context is one of the most common errors in evaluation. CRAD made the opposite choice: starting from a recognised methodological framework, the EIGE Gender Equality Index (European Institute for Gender Equality), which structures measurement around weighted domains rather than a misleading arithmetic average, then reworking it in depth to fit the reality of West African clean energy SMEs. The choice of EIGE is no accident: its 2023 edition focused precisely on the green transition in transport and energy, a sign that gender in decarbonisation is now a measurement object in its own right, including in the most advanced economies. CRAD transposed that logic, not its thresholds, by building a reference framework specific to the region's energy sector.

The approach followed a rigorous sequence whose order is anything but incidental. A broad census first, to map the players before any measurement: roughly 800 sustainable energy SMEs identified across the twelve countries. An in-depth survey next, of a sample of 100 SMEs, nearly 300 people interviewed, leaders and staff, women and men, to capture both governance and lived experience. A weighting of domains finally, according to their real structural weight, so that the index reveals gaps instead of smoothing them out. It is this architecture, not a simple poll, that separates a descriptive statistic from a steering instrument.

What a single figure reveals: the WOCEWA finding

The regional score of 48.1 out of 100 is deliberately sober. It says neither that all is well nor that all is lost: it says the region sits roughly halfway to full parity, and for the first time provides a baseline from which to measure progress or regression. That is precisely the value of an index: turning a sensitive, anecdotal subject into a tracked quantity. Behind that 48.1, a second figure stands out for its sharpness: only 16% of the sustainable energy SMEs surveyed are led by women. In other words, more than eight firms in ten in the sector are run by men. This result, far from being a regional quirk, almost exactly matches what the World Bank measures at the continental level: about 16% of Sub-Saharan African firms have a woman at their head (World Bank Enterprise Surveys). The convergence is instructive: West African energy does neither better nor worse than the economy around it, which shifts the diagnosis from a sectoral problem to a structural one.

The mechanisms behind the figure: where equality is lost

A composite index is only useful if it breaks down. The weakest sub-score is almost never the mere presence of women, but their access to the levers of growth: capital, productive land, public procurement, technical training and business networks. Global data illuminates the mechanism. According to IRENA, even in solar, the most feminised sub-sector, 58% of women hold administrative jobs and only a minority hold technical or leadership functions. Segregation is therefore less at the sector's entrance than inside it: women get in, but cluster in the least-paid and least-decisive roles. The same logic appears in regional employment, where a large share of women hold precarious or part-time positions (about 45% of women in the private sector across the WAEMU area work part-time, according to the World Bank). Energy inequality is just one instance of a wider pattern: women gain access to work, far less to economic power.

This gradient has a direct consequence for public action. A policy content with raising the number of women employed in the sector would not fix what matters, because the deficit lies in the quality and power of the positions held, not just in their count. Targeting parity at the point of entry without touching the internal ceiling would mean measuring progress while leaving inequality intact. An index that distinguishes these dimensions avoids that trap: it tells you not only how many women, but which ones, and in what role.

A reassuring regional average can mask violent gaps between countries and between functions. The point of an index is not to simplify reality, but to reveal it.

Why the anecdote is not enough, and the index is

Everyone in the West African energy sector knows remarkable women entrepreneurs. But the anecdote, by construction, cannot be compared, aggregated or tracked over time. It feeds the narrative, never the trade-off. A donor choosing between supporting access to credit, technical training or land reform can draw nothing from a testimony, however powerful: they need to know which of these locks weighs most, and in which country. That is exactly what a composite index produces. By breaking equality down into weighted domains measured identically from one country to the next, it turns a diffuse impression into a hierarchy of intervention. Where the anecdote says the problem exists, the index says where it hurts most and which dollar invested will reduce it most. That is the difference between telling a story about inequality and correcting it.

This property is decisive for steering funding. The sector's donors (IDRC, ECOWAS partners, development banks) reason in terms of allocation: a finite amount to split between countries and between levers. Without a comparable measure, that allocation is made on the basis of visibility or advocacy, that is, badly. With a disaggregated index, it can follow the gap: concentrating effort where the sub-score is lowest and the expected return highest. The index does not replace political judgement, it arms it.

From diagnosis to a fundable action plan

An index that ends up in a drawer has no value. That is why the mission did not stop at the finding: it led to a regional 2026-2030 roadmap, built around financial, skills and governance levers, and costed at 18.96 million USD so as to be presentable to donors. This shift from score to plan is the moment when data changes nature: it stops being a report and becomes an investment argument. A gap figure (48.1 out of 100) calls for an effort figure (18.96 million USD), and it is the pairing of the two that makes a decision possible. The validation of the framework by ECOWAS member states, at a regional workshop in Cotonou, completed the transformation of a study deliverable into a shared policy instrument.

The cost of inaction: a growth reserve left aside

Under-using women's entrepreneurial potential in energy is not only a matter of fairness, it is an economic loss. The region is about to invest massively in its power system to close its access deficit; mobilising its entrepreneurial population in full conditions the return on that investment. Conversely, letting the sector be built with only 16% of women leaders means designing the energy transition on half the available talent. The cost of inaction is paid in missed growth, in SMEs that are never created, in innovations that never emerge and in markets (notably clean cooking and household solar, where demand is largely driven by women) poorly served for want of firms led by those who understand them best. An energy transition that ignores gender is not only unjust: it is less efficient.

What regional averages hide

One point is decisive for action: the regional 48.1 is an average, and averages mask what matters. Behind that single score lie twelve countries in sharply contrasting situations, and within each country, domains that progress at different rates. A country may show a decent presence of women in the sector while excluding them almost entirely from capital and decision-making; another may count few entrepreneurs but offer them better access to credit. These two countries can obtain the same overall score for opposite reasons, and call for radically different policies. That is why the operational value of the GEI lies not in its aggregate figure, useful for communication, but in its breakdown by country and domain, useful for action. Spreading the same effort uniformly across the twelve countries would be as ineffective as ignoring the inequality itself.

This is CRAD's distinctive angle, tested on WOCEWA as on its agricultural and health missions: data is only valuable if it is disaggregated, comparable and repeated over time. An index measured once is a photograph; measured at regular intervals, it becomes a steering instrument that tells you whether policies are working. WOCEWA's real promise is not the 2026 score, but the ability to measure the 2030 one by the same rule, and thus to know, at last, whether the money spent on equality has produced equality.

Three transferable lessons

Beyond energy, the WOCEWA experience illuminates any evidence-based inclusion policy. It reminds us first that the quality of the initial census conditions everything else: you only measure well what you have first correctly counted, and the 800 SMEs censused are the foundation without which the index would be hollow. It shows next that data disaggregated by gender and country is the only kind that lets you act in the right place, because an average cannot be treated, only its gaps can be corrected. It confirms finally that an indicator is only valuable if paired with a monitoring system: without repetition, an index measures a state, never progress. These three principles apply to health, education or agriculture as much as to energy. They define what it means to steer a policy by data rather than by intention.

The full detail of the method, of the country-level results and of the action plan is documented on the project's dedicated site, https://www.wocewa.com/. In the end, WOCEWA will have proved one thing at once simple and demanding: inclusion is not decreed, it is documented, then financed on the basis of what has been documented. As long as the place of women in energy remains an impression, it will remain a slogan. Measured, disaggregated and tracked, it becomes a policy.

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