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In a dimly lit corridor of a mud-walled house nestled among coconut trees, Sharifa Hussein stripped red and black cables, a screwdriver voltage tester balanced between her lips and rolls of cable lying by her feet.
Then, with the help of three other women, she attached the two wires to an electronic device nailed on the wall.
The women, all dressed in colourful hijabs, were installing solar power to a house in Muyuni B village in Unguja, the main island in the semiautonomous archipelago of Zanzibar, which lies off the coast of Tanzania in eastern Africa.
They are part of a larger group – known fondly as Solar Mamas – who assemble, install, repair and maintain solar power kits in villages across the archipelago. They receive training from a community-based organisation called Barefoot College Zanzibar.
Only about half of the nearly two million people in Zanzibar have access to electricity – in part because of high connection costs and, in some areas, a lack of access to the power grid. Many people resort to using costly and dangerous fuels such as paraffin and charcoal.
At the same time, employment opportunities are limited, especially in rural areas where literacy levels are low. Women, primarily seen as caregivers and responsible for housework, are particularly vulnerable to being marginalised.
The Barefoot College programme, which trains women who have little to no formal education to become solar technicians, is working to simultaneously promote clean energy adoption and foster socioeconomic development.
For the Solar Mamas, the programme has become a pathway to emancipation. To qualify for participation they should be aged 35 or over, have leadership qualities, and not be too advanced in their education.
“Many opportunities don’t reach such women,” said Brenda Geofrey, the director of programmes and operations at Barefoot College. “We want to change their mindset from thinking they were just born to be mothers and to raise children to knowing they can be professionals.”
The women take part in three months of training – boarding for the period – at the college in Kinyasini village, about 37 miles (60km) north of Muyuni B. Upon completion, the Zanzibari government gives them 25 solar power kits each for installation in households – including theirs – in their home villages. They charge each household a monthly fee of 6,000 Tanzanian shillings (about £2) for five years.
Juma Burhan, the executive director of the Zanzibar Economic Empowerment Agency, said: “The Solar Mamas have helped empower our people by giving them electricity, which is a very important social service. They’ve also got themselves employment and income to sustain their livelihoods.”
Since 2015, Barefoot College has trained 65 women from Zanzibar in solar engineering, who in turn have connected 1,858 houses in 29 villages to power. The institution also acts as a regional centre and has trained women from Malawi and Somaliland.
Hussein graduated from Barefoot College in October and has since installed solar power in three houses. “I’ve benefited greatly,” said the 44-year-old mother of five. “The programme has opened my mind.”
Hussein, who studied up to the second year of secondary school, said she was proud that people in her village now view her as a professional. She hopes to start a shop to sell items, including solar power appliances, in the future.
The programme was established in India in 1997 by the social activist and educator Bunker Roy and has been adopted by 93 other countries. Members of the first six cohorts from Zanzibar were trained in India and now teach the next generation of Solar Mamas in the archipelago.
On a recent afternoon at a lab in the Kinyasini college, eight women sat at long worktables covered with tablets, voltmeters, soldering irons and other devices. They were listening to 59-year-old Fatma Haji, a member of the first college cohort in 2011, as she taught them colour coding. “Zero is for black. One is for brown. Two is for red. Three is for orange,” Haji said in Swahili, her words spoken back at her in unison by her students.
Next, 47-year-old Kazija Issa, from the fifth cohort, took the reins with a lesson on resistance and circuit board assembly.
Helene Ahlborg and Kavya Michael, researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, have studied the work of the Solar Mamas. The programme, they said, addresses “the way patriarchal norms undermine women in their capacities as knowledgable and competent individuals” and “breaks down stigmas and social barriers by showing that people without formal education can have the capacity to become experts and community leaders”.
Back in Muyuni B on a scorching Sunday morning, Solar Mama Arafa Khamis removed her shoes, fastened her hijab and scaled a wooden ladder propped against the side of a house. Once she reached the top, her colleague Zuleha Maulid passed up a solar panel and Khamis secured it to the iron-sheet roof.
When they were done, the home’s owner, Salama Hamis, went round testing the lights, beaming with joy as they lit up. She smiled at the thought of all the improvements the solar power would bring: enough light for her children to do their homework comfortably in the evening, no more spending money on torch batteries and no more taking her phone to a neighbour’s for charging.
“I’ll feel very happy,” she said. “My children will enjoy it.”
