The Zambia Gender and Energy Network ‘(ZGEN) National Focal Point organization is housed at, is housed at the Department of Energy under the Ministry of Energy and Water Development. The network’s overall objective is to “engender and empower” women so that they play an active role in energy planning and decision making. In 2010 ENERGIA supported ZGEN in a seed funding project aimed at strengthening the network and increasing awareness about the network and gender and energy issues.

Key objectives:

• Increase visibility of network through awareness and publicity campaigns.
• Network strengthening.
• Dissemination of energy issues and options. 

Key results:

• Three feature stories were published in the local national newspapers.
• A documentary giving an overview of the activities the Zambia Gender and Energy Network undertook including coverage of actual activities was produced.
• Two hundred brochures on ZGEN were distributed through participation in the Energy Week.
• Network planning meeting took place.

Lessons learned:

• Gender is still considered to be synonymous with women therefore more women than men are nominated by their organisations to be part of the Network.
• The rural community is more enlightened and economically empowered than we sometimes perceive them to be, which means that there is an easy acceptability of project ideas and even ideas provided by community members that add to success of the activities.
• Although network members are interested in participating in the scheduled activities, their own line of duty normally determines their participation.
• There is a need to share success stories in the ENERGIA Network.

DOE Seed funding report FINAL 2010 - Download

Gel Stoves - Download

Newspaper extract - Download

Second feature story on ZGEN - Download

ZGEN broshure - Download