How colonial legacies, patriarchal labour systems, and neoliberal energy contracts exclude African women from renewable energy’s economic transition—with systemic remedies
Original framing: “Who gets the clean energy jobs and contracts? How Ghana and South Africa’s plans can do more for women” — The Conversation - Global
The piece fails to connect women’s current exclusion from clean energy jobs to the historical role of forced labour systems like the transatlantic slave trade and colonial indentured labour, which systematically devalued African women’s labour and limited their access to skilled trades. In South Africa, the Mines and Works Act of 1911 explicitly barred African women from mining jobs—a precedent that echoes today’s gendered division of labour in renewable energy sectors. Similarly, Ghana’s colonial cocoa economy marginalised women from high-value agricultural roles, a pattern that repeats in the renewable energy sector where women are often confined to low-skilled labour. The historical continuity between these systems reveals how gendered labour divisions are not natural but structurally enforced through legal and economic mechanisms. Without this historical context, the current ‘gender gap’ framing risks repeating the same exclusionary patterns under a new guise of ‘inclusivity’.
The exclusion of African women from renewable energy jobs and contracts is not merely a gender equity issue but a systemic consequence of interlocking colonial legacies, patriarchal labour systems, and neoliberal energy contracts that prioritise foreign capital over local female entrepreneurship.
Historical precedents like South Africa’s Mines and Works Act and Ghana’s colonial cocoa economy reveal how gendered labour divisions are structurally enforced through legal and economic mechanisms that persist today, while the absence of indigenous land tenure systems—where women often held co-ownership rights—further marginalises them from both land and capital. The current narrative’s focus on ‘skills gaps’ and ‘loans’ obscures the deeper mechanisms: how women’s unpaid care work limits their participation in training, how financial institutions systematically deny them access to capital, and how multinational energy corporations dictate contract terms that exclude women-led businesses. Cross-cultural examples from Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Senegal demonstrate that women’s participation in renewable energy is not just about access to resources but about aligning policies with existing cultural and communal structures. To create meaningful change, solutions must address these systemic barriers through affirmative co-operatives that redistribute land and capital, integrated childcare and flexible training programs, contract allocation reforms with gender equity audits, and culturally tailored education that leverages traditional knowledge. Without disrupting these power structures—rooted in history and reinforced by contemporary corporate and state policies—the renewable energy transition risks perpetuating rather than addressing the inequalities it claims to combat.