Online Reporter
Herald Correspondent
PRESIDENT Mnangagwa is set to officiate at the 2026 SADC Sustainable Energy Week (SEW), which will be held in Victoria Falls from February 23 to 27.
As Southern Africa prepares for the 2026 SADC SEW one truth must sit at the centre of the region’s energy agenda: sustainable energy is not only an infrastructure priority – it is one of the most powerful tools for women’s empowerment and inclusive development.
Before sunrise in many communities across the region, the day begins the same way. Women and young girls walk long distances to fetch firewood, queue for water, and prepare meals over smoky fires, organising their households around the limits of daylight. In homes without reliable electricity, time is rationed, opportunity is constrained, and productivity is negotiated hour by hour.
This is what energy poverty looks like on the ground, and in Southern Africa it has a distinctly female face.
Across SADC, women are the backbone of households, food systems, informal economies, care work and community resilience. Yet they are also the ones who bear the heaviest burden when energy is absent, and who stand to gain the most when clean, reliable energy arrives. As Zimbabwe prepares to host the 2026 SADC Sustainable Energy Week this reality must shape not only the conversation, but the priorities, financing decisions and outcomes of the region’s energy transition.
The most visible cost of energy poverty is not recorded in megawatts, but in hours. In rural districts across Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and parts of South Africa, women and young girls still spend several hours each day collecting firewood and cooking with inefficient fuels. In districts such as Mbire, Binga, Mudzi and parts of Tsholotsho in Zimbabwe, firewood sources are increasingly distant due to deforestation and climate pressure – forcing longer walks and heavier loads. That is time not spent in school, earning income, or building skills. Energy poverty is not only a development issue – It is a safety and dignity issue.
A parallel health crisis unfolds quietly in kitchens. Millions of households continue cooking with firewood, charcoal or kerosene in poorly ventilated spaces. Across rural and high-density urban settlements alike, it is common to see mothers cooking with infants on their backs, both inhaling smoke for hours each day. The same scenes are repeated across Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and parts of South Africa. The result is a silent epidemic of respiratory disease, eye problems, cardiovascular illness and pregnancy complications. Women and young children are the most exposed, mostly because of the roles imposed by poverty and social inequality. If the region is serious about health, productivity, resilience, clean cooking cannot remain peripheral. It must be central to the energy policy.
In Malawi, women-led micro-enterprises are using solar power for phone charging, refrigeration and small retail services, turning energy access into survival and growth strategies. Along Mozambique’s coast and riverine areas, electricity access helps traders to preserve fish, meat and vegetables, protecting both livelihoods and nutrition. In South Africa, load shedding disproportionately affects women-owned township and informal settlement businesses already operating on tight margins. In Zambia, women’s cooperatives are using solar-powered milling and cold storage to stabilise food supply and earnings. In Zimbabwe, women running peanut butter processing, small grain milling, poultry projects and horticulture enterprises report immediate improvements when they gain access to solar or grid power — they can work longer hours, reduce losses, and increase incomes.
Everywhere, the pattern is the same. Energy access multiplies women’s productivity; energy insecurity multiplies their vulnerability.
As host of the 2026 SADC Sustainable Energy Week, Zimbabwe illustrates both the challenge and the opportunity. In districts affected by climate shocks and economic stress, women are sustaining families and local economies despite limited infrastructure. Yet where solar mini-grids, borehole solarisation, and electrification of clinics and schools have been introduced, the transformation is immediate. Clinics can store vaccines and deliver babies safely at night. Schools can offer evening study sessions and digital learning. Women’s groups can process food, refrigerate products and run profitable enterprises. Households save hours previously spent collecting fuel and water. In places like Mbire and Binga, energy access has meant the difference between subsistence and surplus, between vulnerability and resilience.
But this is not only a development story – it is also a rights story. Africa’s Maputo Protocol recognises women’s right to a healthy and sustainable environment. The SADC Protocol on Gender and Development commits Member States to gender-responsive development and equitable access to resources and services. Globally, CEDAW and the Beijing Platform for Action commit governments to remove structural barriers to women’s full participation in economic and social life. Taken together, these frameworks point to an unavoidable conclusion: energy policy is gender policy. A regional energy transition that fails to reduce women’s time poverty, health risks and economic exclusion cannot be a successful transition.
This is precisely why the 2026 SADC Sustainable Energy Week matters. The region is entering a decisive decade of energy investment, regional integration and industrial transformation. The choices made now will either lock women into another generation of time poverty and vulnerability or unlock one of the strongest accelerators of gender equality and sustainable growth in Southern Africa.
For more information, visit the official website: https://sadcenergyweek.org
