It is 10 am in Mtima Village, Traditional Authority Mkagula in Zomba District. Women stand in a circle, surrounding a small solar-powered gadget recharging on a wooden table.
Next to the table is Zione Chimatiro, 24, cautiously holding a tester as if it might explode anytime.
Her hands tremble as she seeks to focus on the technical task in her hands.
This is a major shift in a community where for generations women’s contribution has been confined to traditional household chores such as pounding maize, fetching water and cooking.
“I was afraid I could get electrocuted or burn the whole village,” said Chimatiro as she narrates the experience on her first day of handling the solar equipment.
Weeks later, she found herself standing shoulder to shoulder with other female solar technicians who had completed solar installation training at Sparkle Foundation.
From the training, the women look forward to stepping into a world full of opportunities in which the communities will see them in a different light.
The newly-graduated solar installation technicians include Gladys Balakasi. The 34-year-old single mother of three from Brayidoni Village in Zomba says her income from groundnut farming and seasonal piecework were not enough to feed her family.
She says: “People think strength is lifting something heavy but real strength is waking up when you don’t know where your children’s meal will come from.”
Balakasi says when she learned about the Sparkle Foundation staff were on a recruitment drive for trainees, she felt she would not make it because she did not meet the minimum entry requirement.
She says she was encouraged by her daughter who convinced he to try her luck.
“My daughter said, ‘Mama, maybe this will change everything. Go,’” Balakasi recalls.
She says a trainer Mary Maduka took the class step-by-step by discussing materials used for making a solar panel identifying the colours and functions of the electric wires.
As the training progressed her interest grew. The curiosity saw her securing a front seat in class as she did not fear that she would fail to answer a question posed by the trainer.
“I discovered a part of myself that I didn’t know existed,” Balakasi says.
But the journey was not all rosy. Balakasi said she endured walking about eight kilometres with a baby on her back to get to the training centre.
Another participant Dorothy Kassim, 21, says she joined the training as a young mother who narrowly escaped unplanned marriage.
She praises the training as a survival tool that helped her not to give up even under the most hostile situations.
“I can earn money now. I can be somebody. One day I want to install solar on every house in this village,” says Kassim.
On the other hand, 25-year-old Esimy Rabson from Lundu Village says lost her home and crops to Cyclone Freddy and she joined the training filled with hope that it will be a stepping stone towards rebuilding her life.
Despite voices that demean the female solar installers, whenever given a chance to showcase their skills, the women step forward with confidence.
Sparkle Foundation programmes director Victor Billy Gama says the initiative aims to open technical fields to rural women while expanding access to clean energy.
“Clean energy should not only light homes. It should light the path for women to enter careers that were closed to them,” he says.
On her part, Sparkle Foundation chief operations officer Gertrude Kabwazi says the foundation sees each trainee as a potential community energy leader, not merely a beneficiary.
“When you train a woman, you empower a household. Train many and you transform a community,” she states.
For the women, the deeper change is not technical but emotional: A shift in how they stand, speak and imagine their futures.
Chimatiro, who once froze at the sight of a tester, now walks with her head high.
“The day I will install my first panel, I’ll feel like I’ve touched the sun, and I’ll never be the same,” she says.
With support from Nama Women Advancement, Spackle Foundation aims at empowering underserved women and youths in Zomba City, by equipping them with vocational skills, financial literacy, entrepreneurship support and career counselling, enabling them to achieve economic independence and contribute to sustainable community development.
The project seeks to train 100 women and youths in financial literacy and vocational skills of their choice. On the training menu are courses trades such as tailoring, information, communication and technology, weaving, sustainable farming or solar installation.
Research by the World Bank indicates that Malawi and Africa have immense, untapped solar potential with vast rural populations in need of access to energy.
In Malawi, around 12 percent of households owned a solar device by 2020 while continent-wide solar power accounted for only about 3 percent of total electricity generation.
An estimated 600 million people in Africa lack access to electricity, creating a significant market for off-grid solar solutions.
This is where the newly-trained solar power installers should celebrate. It is clear that as far as renewable energy is concerned, the harvest is great but the labourers are few.
