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Women are the key players in the developing world these days. Most often than not, they’re the sole driving force behind local and parallel economies, subjected to labor-intensive and unpaid work like in Uganda where 80% of all unpaid workers are women. A report by the World Bank found that they’re also victims of gender discrimination in the formal employment sector. This all happens despite Ugandan women being highly entrepreneurial.

These women are being marginalized and prevented from taking a bigger role in the country’s economic development due to lack of information about their own legal rights as citizens and also the inexistence of mechanisms that would help enforce the law. 

Things are slowly changing thanks to the committed work of a few institutions like Solar Sister, a social enterprise that provides training, financing and marketing support to help women in Uganda launch businesses. Solar Sister grants portable solar lights, solar-powered mobile phone and radio-charging solutions and clean cook stoves to entrepreneurial Ugandan women. By doing so, it helps provide women with an income that will support their families. The ultimate goal of the project is to defeat poverty.

In the last two years, Solar Sister has helped launch 132 of what they call micro-enterprises in three countries, and provided over 17,000 people with solar-powered lighting solutions. At the moment, Solar Sister is full of new ideas having founded a partnership with a Chicago-based nonprofit organization the Center for Applied Innovation. Together they are providing education and training for 100 girls in Uganda, as part of the Invent for Humanity campaign. These girls are learning about solar technology, environmental and health benefits of clean energy technologies. By taking part, the girls have the chance to earn income for school improvement projects. The Invent for Humanity campaign leverages the experience of professionals in intellectual property and licensing in order to support sustainable technologies that benefit people in developing countries: from low-cost hearing aids for children in Vietnam to energy-efficient biomass stoves for women in India.