Solar Sister and Koolboks have partnered to enable 1,000 women entrepreneurs to launch and grow income-generating businesses powered by solar productive use of energy (PUE) technologies by 2028.
Solar Sister and Koolboks aim to use the partnership to drive clean energy access, women’s economic empowerment, and food security across sub-Saharan Africa.
“At Solar Sister, we believe that when women are equipped with clean energy, they light their homes and power progress. With this commitment, we are launching our Powered By Program to unlock the economic potential of women entrepreneurs, transforming livelihoods, strengthening food systems, and building climate-resilient communities across Africa, said Olasimbo Sojinrin, CEO of Solar Sister. By partnering with Koolboks, we are proving that the future of energy access is not only clean but deeply inclusive, driven by women, for the beneft of all.”
The collaboration was announced as a new Commitment to Action at the Clinton Global Initiative 2025 which was founded by President Bill Clinton in 2005 as a community of doers representing a broad cross section of society and dedicated to the idea that we can accomplish more together than we can apart.
With over 600 million people in Africa lacking electricity and 940 million still relying on unsafe, polluting cooking fuels, the region faces overlapping challenges of energy poverty, food insecurity, and climate vulnerability. A lack of reliable cold storage is a signifcant barrier, resulting in post-harvest food losses estimated at up to 40% in some areas. This partnership will help address these challenges by empowering women at the last mile with clean, reliable energy solutions.
Solar Sister, which operates in Nigeria, Tanzania, and Kenya, recruits, trains, and supports women entrepreneurs to deliver clean energy solutions to underserved communities. To date, Solar Sister has established a network of over 12,100 entrepreneurs, reaching more than 5.5 million people with access to clean energy.brings a proven, women-led model of recruiting, training, and supporting entrepreneurs in Nigeria, Tanzania, and Kenya.
Together, the two firms will integrate solar-powered refrigeration, solar generators, and other PUE technologies into Solar Sister’s network of women entrepreneurs, creating new opportunities for food preservation, small businesses, and household resilience.
Koolboks, a Nigerian-founded company, designs and distributes innovative, solar-powered refrigeration solutions that provide affordable cooling and storage even without consistent grid power. Its solar-powered refrigeration solutions provide reliable cold storage for households, health facilities, and small businesses in off-grid and weak-grid areas.
Recently, Koolboks raised $11 million to scale its solar-powered, IoT-enabled refrigeration solutions across Africa and other emerging markets. And this partnership is one way of doing it. Over the next three years, Solar Sister and Koolboks will deploy 1,000 solar-powered PUE units (such as refrigeration and cold storage) in underserved communities of Nigeria, Kenya, and Tanzania.
They will also train and support 1,000 women entrepreneurs with technical, fnancial, and entrepreneurial skills, develop a scalable model for affordable distribution, after-sales service, and gender-informed market insights and generate gender-disaggregated data to inform future scaling and policy advocacy.
By 2028, this commitment will establish security, reducing carbon emissions, and 1,000 women-led PUE enterprises, improving food creating a pathway for sustainable economic growth.
CGI’s unique model has seen more than 10,000 organizations launch more than 4,000 Commitments to Action — new, specifc, and measurable projects and programs – that are making a difference in the lives of more than 500 million people in 180 countries.