What gender responsive financing can unlock for women entrepreneurs

Women play a central role in local economies across Sub-Saharan Africa, yet the systems that shape access to finance, energy and productive assets continue to limit their economic potential. In energy poor contexts, women shoulder a disproportionate share of unpaid labour, health risks and financial exclusion while remaining the backbone of household and small enterprise activity.

Globally, women are still more likely to operate informal, low margin businesses. Limited access to reliable and affordable energy compounds this inequality. Productive assets from irrigation pumps to cold storage and clean cooking technologies can dramatically increase women’s earning potential but high upfront costs and constrained financing continue to keep these tools out of reach.

Against this backdrop, the Gender Results Based Financing (RBF) pilot offers an important case study in what happens when incentives are intentionally designed around women’s realities rather than treating gender as an afterthought.

Why energy access matters for women’s economic power

Energy access is not just about lighting homes – it is about time, income and health. More than 2 billion people still rely on polluting fuels for cooking, with women and girls bearing the greatest burden of fuel collection and exposure to harmful smoke. Household air pollution is linked to hundreds of thousands of premature deaths each year in Sub-Saharan Africa, with women disproportionately affected.

Energy also underpins productivity. A growing body of evidence shows that electrification and access to clean cooking technologies are associated with reductions in gender inequality, largely by freeing up time and enabling income generating activities. When women can irrigate crops, process food, preserve perishables or run businesses for longer hours, they are better positioned to move from subsistence activities to enterprises with growth potential.

The Gender RBF pilot: testing a different approach

The Gender RBF pilot implemented by Shell Foundation in partnership with Odyssey Energy Solutions and CrossBoundary Advisory set out to test whether targeted, results based incentives could help energy companies reach more women customers while generating measurable economic outcomes.

US$500,000 in results based financing supported four appliance distributors operating in Kenya, Nigeria and Tanzania, covering clean cookstoves, solar irrigation pumps, cold storage and ag processing equipment. The programme combined incentives for distributors with affordability support for women endusers, while mandating women’s ownership of the assets, an important design choice to ensure income and control accrued directly to women.

The results were tangible. Across the pilot, 2,494 income generating appliances were sold to women, the vast majority of whom had not previously had access to comparable technology. An independent impact assessment found that 81% of women reported increased income, with average monthly earnings rising by US$61.60, an increase of 36%. Over the lifetime of the appliances, this translates into more than US$4.6 million in additional net income for participating women.

For many, these gains were transformative rather than marginal. Women reported improved ability to save, greater financial resilience and particularly in the case of clean cooking better respiratory health and cleaner home environments. These findings echo broader research showing that productive use energy shortens payback periods and improves repayment capacity, strengthening the commercial case for serving women customers.

What worked and why it matters beyond this pilot

One of the most striking insights from the pilot was how quickly demand responded when barriers were lowered. In some cases, distributors saw temporary increases of up to 70% in sales to women, driven not only by improved affordability but also by changes in how products were marketed, financed and supported.

Women to women sales models proved particularly effective. Female sales agents consistently outperformed their peers not just in reaching women customers, but overall. Several distributors have since increased recruitment of women across sales, customer support, and technical roles.

The pilot also reinforced that “selling to women” rarely means selling to women alone. Purchasing decisions are often negotiated at the household level, even when women are the primary users and income earners. Designing sales processes, messaging, and financing around this reality proved essential to uptake and sustained use.

Placing the findings in a global context

The implications extend far beyond four companies or three countries. Despite growing attention to gender and energy, less than half of global energy data is gender disaggregated and women remain underrepresented across energy value chains. At the same time, women led and women focused enterprises continue to face chronic financing gaps.

Results based financing offers one way to address these challenges if it is designed with care. Globally, the evidence shows RBF can help de-risk new markets, crowd in private capital and align incentives around outcomes rather than outputs . The Gender RBF pilot adds to this evidence by demonstrating that gender intentional design can unlock both social impact and commercial opportunity.

What needs to change to scale impact

The pilot also surfaced important lessons for the future. While the original hypothesis was compelling to test – combining enterprise and enduser subsidies to create a push and pull effect – the pilot revealed significant operational complexities associated with enduser subsidies, particularly in relation to longterm sustainability. Despite these challenges, testing this model generated highly valuable learnings about what works and what does not. The pilot surfaced important lessons for the future: short timelines and complex enduser subsidy mechanisms created operational challenges for distributors, especially around pricing adjustments and customer communication. Taken together, these findings suggest that future programmes should place greater emphasis on enterprise level support, enabling companies to embed gender inclusive business models rather than relying heavily on short term consumer discounts.

Longer programme horizons of 24 to 36 months rather than six would better align with typical repayment cycles for productive use appliances and allow more accurate measurement of sustained income, ownership and repayment outcomes. Independent, sample based impact assessments can also reduce data burdens while improving reliability.

Finally, technology matters. Digital platforms that automate data collection, verification and disbursement can dramatically lower costs and make results based approaches viable at scale – an essential consideration if gender responsive financing is to move from pilots to mainstream practice.

Looking ahead

The Gender RBF pilot demonstrates that when financing is designed around women’s realities, the returns can be substantial. Smart, time bound public and philanthropic capital can catalyse lasting change by proving that women are a viable and valuable customer segment and by giving businesses the confidence to invest accordingly.

If clean energy transitions and inclusive growth are to succeed, women cannot remain an afterthought. When women gain access to the right tools, the benefits extend far beyond individual incomes to families, communities and entire markets.