GEAPP and Shortlist Introduce ‘Women for Green Jobs’ Initiative Across Six Countries in Africa

The multi-year $2.2m program will help scale up Shortlist’s successful youth employment program for the energy sector

Nairobi, Kenya – The Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP) and Shortlist are proud to announce the launch of “Women for Green Jobs,” a new collaboration to create 750 green jobs for women across six countries in Sub-Saharan Africa: Nigeria, Uganda, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Kenya and Malawi. GEAPP launched at COP26 with philanthropic partners including The Rockefeller Foundation, IKEA Foundation and Bezos Earth Fund, leading development finance institutions and energy sector partners working to accelerate investment in a more rapid and equitable green energy transition in developing and emerging economies. Shortlist is a global leader in executive search and youth employment solutions, working across Sub-Saharan Africa and India.

The multi-year $2.2m program, with funding from The Rockefeller Foundation, will help scale up Shortlist’s successful youth employment program for the energy sector, the “Off-Grid Talent Initiative” (OGTI), which is backed by the UK’s FCDO, the Carbon Trust, and the University of Cape Town. Since its launch in 2019, OGTI has engaged with over 100,000 young people about careers in the green economy and created 400 jobs across 37 clean energy employers in 9 countries in Africa.

Despite widespread youth unemployment, access to talent is among the biggest barriers to scaling up the clean energy sector in emerging markets. Moreover, women continue to be significantly under-represented across the clean energy value chain, with less than a third of jobs filled by females on average in Africa. This gender imbalance is putting the long-term viability and sustainability of the sector at risk, inviting new approaches to expand female participation in the green economy.

Shortlist’s job creation model is innovative in multiple ways. First, Shortlist works directly with employers to address actual labor shortages, solving the “last mile” of employer demand rather than just conducting training and hoping graduates find jobs. Second, Shortlist builds public good talent communities by partnering with community-based organizations, conducting marketing campaigns and hosting events and peer-learning opportunities to raise awareness and excitement about career paths in the renewable energy sector. Third, Shortlist deploys targeted wage subsidies to encourage employers to bring on young people with little or no work experience, providing critical on-the-job training for full-time employment. To date, over 90% of participants who completed these work experiences have converted into full-time employment, showing the viability of these “job try-outs” as a pathway to career-track employment.

Women for Green Jobs will take a more deliberate, gender-lens approach to hiring. As part of this programming, Value for Women will provide gender-focused advisory services to energy employers to improve their HR systems and processes to hire and retain female talent. In a sector where jobs are traditionally highly gendered — installation engineers are predominantly men and women have greater presence in digital customer service, field agent and data analyst roles — programming will cover not only these roles where women are already actively working but also cover those that have been traditionally male-dominated, in an effort to broaden perceptions of where women can contribute.

“GEAPP is committed to supporting gender equity to ensure that women will benefit from investments in renewable energy projects around the world,” said Suman Sureshbabu, Managing Director, Demand Enterprise at the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP). “Our collaboration with Shortlist will help create opportunities for women to be part of the climate solution and the jobs of the future.”

“We’re proud to partner with The Rockefeller Foundation, the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet, and Value For Women on this new initiative. We’re excited to not just create new career pathways for women, but also to act as the strategic connector between clean energy companies and local talent partners to shape more equitable hiring practices across the renewable energy sector in Africa,” said Paul Breloff, CEO of Shortlist.

“We at Value for Women are thrilled to together turn aspirations into action for Shortlist and partners who are looking for triple-bottom line impacts. We see this partnership as a strategic opportunity to improve the lives of women and communities while improving the business bottom line,” said Rebecca Fries, CEO of Value for Women.