Women play a vital role in any society.

Several women have distinguished themselves as outstanding captains of industry, leaders and responsible individuals in society. It is estimated that companies with three or more women in senior management functions score higher in all dimensions of organizational effectiveness. According to data from the United Nations, increased educational attainment by women and girls has accounted for 50 per cent of the economic growth in Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries over the past 50 years. More data also reveals that as of 2013, 49.1 percent of the world’s working women were in vulnerable employment, often unprotected by labour legislation.

Women, especially those in poverty, appear to be more vulnerable in the face of natural disasters. A recent study of 141 countries found that more women than men die from natural hazards. Women and children also bear the main negative impacts of fuel and water collection and transport, with women in many developing countries spending from 1 to 4 hours a day collecting biomass for fuel.

Take a moment to consider, for example, the simple act of cooking.

Reports indicate that about 95,000 Nigerian women die every year from indoor air pollution due to cooking with dirty fuels, which translated loosely to give you an insight,  will amount to 127 women dying yearly in each local government.

What if we could change the way over 28, 197, 085 (as at 2006) Nigerian families cook their food each day?Imagine if we could help over 16,063,532 Nigerian women who cook with firewood, or the 8,087,203 others who cook with Kerosene, to switch to using cleaner cookstoves?

How cool would that be?

Access to clean energy will not only slow climate change, reduce poverty, drive gender equity, it will save tens of millions of Nigerian women who are literally risking their lives each day to cook food for their families over inefficient cookstoves, polluting open fires and the attendant indoor air pollution, and spending hours gathering fuel often at great personal risk.

Over half of the developing world’s 7.6 billion people population today still cook with charcoal, wood, coal, crop wasted or dung. According to this post, women in some parts of Nigeria have to cook with cow dung as they have no access to, even, firewood. Meanwhile, a study has shown that when people burn cow dung, over 25 per cent of the arsenic in fumes could be absorbed by the respiratory tract and this leads to lung cancer and other diseases.

From a gender perspective, some issues are gender specific, and arise based on the fact that men and women play different roles, face different constraints, and have different needs. Women need renewable energy (which is less labor-using, more convenient, and safer) to address their critical need for cooking energy.

Kiakiagas.com is pioneering Nigeria’s transition from use of biomass through several initiatives such as the female focused Gaspreneur Scheme which helps to build profitable female-owned businesses across the LPG value chain, allowing business owners by joining our already existent supply and distribution chain, to leverage on the existing infrastructurein Nigeria. We realize that women understand the energy mix better, as they are more directly affected by the use of dirty fuels.

We also run our innovative GasLab trainings, where participants learn first-hand on financing opportunities and technical requirements to kick start their businesses in the LPG sector. Here also, we place a particular emphasis on women empowerment in our trainings, as women make better business decisions, being more directly affected by the challenges of indoor air pollution.

Ahead of the 2019 elections, we have also launched the #VoteLPG campaign which is aimed at creating awareness about the need for right policy structures to be implemented by political office holders, to improve the livelihood of women.

Thus far, we have reached out to over 4,000 women, especially through our social media awareness efforts, articles, and promotional activities conducted online. In celebration of Women’s day, we are offering all women who engage with us on social media, a complimentary free copy of the Kiakia Gas summary of the National LNG policy released by the Federal Government. We are also offering a discount for every female participant who registers for our GasLab 0.6 training to take place by the end of this month.

We believe access to clean iscrucial for the attainment of health and education outcomes, achieving the SDGs, and for reducing the cost of doing business and unlocking economic potential and creating jobs.

Today, especially, we celebrate all our women worldwide who make the world a better place.