Makena Ireri is the Director, Demand, Jobs and Livelihoods at Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP). She is an energy specialist with over 11 years of experience in energy production, energy access and international development. With a strong foundation in engineering, Ireri’s diverse work history includes nuclear energy generation (UK), transitioning to renewable energy in international development (various), where she has spent over seven years working on energy access projects by organisations, such as Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), the World Bank and International Finance Corporation. Her work spans advisory support for energy-focused social enterprises in Africa, energy in humanitarian context and the intersections of energy with agriculture and climate change. Before GEAPP, she was the Director of Clean Energy Access Research at the Centre for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) where she managed a £6 million research portfolio to accelerate the availability, affordability and performance of off-grid technologies. Ireri’s unique blend of engineering, research and consulting expertise positions her as a knowledgeable and impactful leader in the energy and international development sectors. In this interview with IJEOMA THOMAS-ODIA, she speaks on women’s involvement in renewable energy, discriminatory policies against women and how to empower them to rise to the top echelon of businesses and organisations.

Take us through your educational and career background?
I am a Director at Global Energy Alliance for People Empowerment (GEAPP) based in Nairobi. My journey into work as an African woman has been interesting and complicated. I started off as an engineer; that is what I studied at the University of Manchester, United Kingdom (UK). In class, we were 15 per cent women; I can remember all the names of the women in the class and actually black women. We were maybe four in the class; you start doubting yourself as a woman and guessing what other people thought you were doing there. At first you question yourself and I think as African women, getting to a place where we are the minority makes us question ourselves. What I learnt in that process is that I know as much as everybody else; we are all here to learn, we all don’t start knowing everything. So, remembering that and allowing it to push me through was so helpful in my university education.

How did you make an inroad into the energy sector?
When I started working in the UK, I used to work in nuclear energy as a civil engineer for the new power stations that were being developed and the ones that were already existing, and again not many women are in that sector. When I joined my company, I was the only black woman in the department.

So, I felt like I was fighting a lot, fighting to be seen, to be heard, for promotion. So, that was a bit difficult in the UK but what I did then was try to find a community. So, finding that community and supporting each other was really what pulled me through in the engineering space. So, I did that for a little bit and it was helpful. It was a good career but at the end, why I ventured into engineering in the first place was to come back home and support African development. You know that the poverty rate across all our countries is scary and the development is so low and when you compare it to the rest of the world, we have all the resources, we have extremely talented people, we have the minerals, but somehow there is a gap between what we have and how it benefits.

What factors kept you going in the sector?
It is seeing the problem. Before I was in the nuclear space where we are producing energy but it is being used in the developed world where they already have a lot of energy and you come back home, you start facing issues like power cuts. You go to a rural area and it is dark; people are using kerosene to light their bulbs. The number of generators and the effect in the country is really difficult. Seeing all these issues made me want to be in the industry that will change that narrative.

At first, I did not know much about the industry, so I started learning on the job and that was really helpful; going to rural areas and talking to people. I have been doing the research to know what problems people are facing and seeing that I can have an impact in my career, that I can change something by being in this sector; that is really what drove me.

The energy sector is still largely dominated by men. What is the way out?
One of the challenges I face as an African woman is that the leadership of the energy sector is still very much concentrated on men, foreigners. That really frustrates me because their view of what you need to solve the problem is very different from mine. I have lived with the problem; you and I have been in a house without lights for extended periods. We know what that actually means.

Even our motivation to change the situation is quite different and that really frustrates me because what it has done is that you see the kind of companies that are investing in the solar energy sector are foreign companies owned and managed by men. It is a reflection of who is making the decision; I think that is a massive challenge to where I sit in the job right now. The people making the decision seem quite different and remote from the people who they are making that decision for and that is quite frustrating for me.

How do I think we can change it? Personally, I force myself to be in the room of decision making. If there are decisions to be made or even something that concerns me, I do whatever I can to make sure I am in the same space that the decision is going to be made. It is a political game you play at work and make sure you are in the right space. You have the information you need; you may have the right contacts and connections staring at you. It is a lot; the end result is that the more of us that are in positions of power, the more we make decisions that are more suitable for the work.

Do you think that cultural roles inhibit women’s potential?
We keep blaming our culture. It is true we did have a culture that supports men more than women. But we forget that we cannot throw away our culture just because there are parts of it that we do not like. I think there is a small step towards change and that is educating all of us, not just women, but men too, people in positions of leadership; educating them on the benefits, some of the approaches that still allow them to maintain what is important to you in culture and gives room for women because I think there are compromises we can find. I think a culture of bias is what we need to treat carefully and it can come with education and exposure.

The other bias is that we just don’t think that women are technical enough sometimes. So, we say, they can’t do hard work, they can’t lift things; you know some of these technical jobs in the solar industry.  I think how we can overcome that is by showing women who are already doing it. Show them that it is possible already so that when someone comes with an argument about how women can’t do this; you will be like they are already doing it. So, I think showing great examples of where women are breaking these biases and breaking the glass ceiling as we call it will be very inspiring. For me, it was inspiring in my career to see women who are already making it.

You know seeing a woman like Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala heading such a huge organisation like World Trade Organisation (WTO) inspires. Here is a black woman standing next to the prime minister saying the energy situation in our country should be changed. You see her breaking the barrier. For me seeing that is an inspiration. I think we can do that at every level.

What do you think militates against women in the work space?
When we look at the situation of women, the fact that if they want a family, they are going to have to take a career break or they are going to need extra time when they come from their jobs or they have extra responsibilities at home, we take that to be a negative on the woman. Don’t forget that women are supporting the man at home who is working late at night. They are already holding the economic engine of a country. For the men to show up at work there is a woman somewhere in the background. Why do we always take that as a negative against women and punish them by saying because you are doing those things to support the man, you can’t get a job? Let us challenge ourselves to think that a job can be structured in many different ways to take care of other parts. I think there are ways to change the way we work now. We should make it more flexible so that we are not punishing the sector or the people that are actually supporting everybody else.